British Airways domestic Club Europe, NCL-LHR
Aug 8, 2019, 3:53 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: Surrey, UK
Programs: BA Gold, *A Gold, IHG Platinum
Posts: 653
British Airways domestic Club Europe, NCL-LHR
As ever, the pics related to this report can be seen here: https://www.inflightwithjames.com/po...stle-heathrow/
After a good few hours wandering around Newcastle, it was time to head back to the airport. This was done by the efficient metro system, which runs every ten minutes or so from the city centre, right out to the airport.
Around 25 minutes later, I arrived. As I was running a little early, there wasn’t anyone at the British Airways check in desk. Luckily I was hand baggage only and already had a mobile boarding pass I didn’t need to stop by and made my way straight up to security. British Airways do provide access to the fast track here, although on this particular occasion there wasn’t any need to really use it, as there was only a couple of people at security when I arrived anyway. When I say fast track, I use the term a little loosely anyway. Rather than it being a dedicated channel, it’s the type where you get to bypass the queue and get spat out at the front of it.
Once the formalities were complete, it was through the duty free shop, and out into the main terminal area. I didn’t stop though, as there’s not an awful lot going on in the main terminal. Instead, I followed the signs for the lounges to wait there for a couple of hours. I grabbed a couple of sandwiches to tide me over for the next hour or so until I was on board.
I got to the gate a little earlier than needed as from memory, the ground crew tend to open the doors to the gate room and it becomes a little bit of a free for all.
Once in the gate room, it was reasonably well set out with separate areas for group 1, groups 2 and 3, then groups 4 and 5. Priority boarding therefore worked just fine.
The flight itself didn’t seem overly full down the back. There was a slight faux pas however - the curtain separating Club and economy was placed behind row three, where as there were actually four rows of Club passengers. The end result being that the family in row 4 were split up and placed in the spare seats dotted over the three rows in front of the curtain. They did so without too much fuss though.
We pushed back more or less on schedule and made one of the shortest taxi’s to the runway I’ve experienced. More or less just a U-turn from where we had pushed back to. As such, we sat at the end of the runway for more than a few minutes while the safety demo finished and the cabin crew secured the cabin.
Once we were off, the crew were a little slower to get the service starting compared the the flight up - although there were two of them serving just the three rows so things were more relaxed.
Catering options tonight were either a seafood salad or Caesar salad. I went for the Caesar salad. It wasn’t anything too spectacular it must be said. By the time I had finished eating, we were into the descent.
Unusually, there wasn’t any holding this evening. As the clouds were at quite a high level, we were treated to some great views over central London as we turned on to finals.
We touched down, made a pretty speedy taxi over to gate A1 and arrived pretty much on schedule.
As this was the nearest gate to the exit and there were no formalities to be made, within four minutes of arriving on to stand, I was on a shuttle bus heading for the car park.
This flight seemed a lot more relaxed for the crew - mainly because it was a few minutes longer and there were a few less passengers to serve. The Do&Co catering still seemed to be a bit of a step down to when it was introduced. To the point that I’d say I preferred the panini and toasted sandwiches that got so much criticism previously.
Not too much more to be said about this sub 1 hour flight really!
After a good few hours wandering around Newcastle, it was time to head back to the airport. This was done by the efficient metro system, which runs every ten minutes or so from the city centre, right out to the airport.
Around 25 minutes later, I arrived. As I was running a little early, there wasn’t anyone at the British Airways check in desk. Luckily I was hand baggage only and already had a mobile boarding pass I didn’t need to stop by and made my way straight up to security. British Airways do provide access to the fast track here, although on this particular occasion there wasn’t any need to really use it, as there was only a couple of people at security when I arrived anyway. When I say fast track, I use the term a little loosely anyway. Rather than it being a dedicated channel, it’s the type where you get to bypass the queue and get spat out at the front of it.
Once the formalities were complete, it was through the duty free shop, and out into the main terminal area. I didn’t stop though, as there’s not an awful lot going on in the main terminal. Instead, I followed the signs for the lounges to wait there for a couple of hours. I grabbed a couple of sandwiches to tide me over for the next hour or so until I was on board.
I got to the gate a little earlier than needed as from memory, the ground crew tend to open the doors to the gate room and it becomes a little bit of a free for all.
Once in the gate room, it was reasonably well set out with separate areas for group 1, groups 2 and 3, then groups 4 and 5. Priority boarding therefore worked just fine.
The flight itself didn’t seem overly full down the back. There was a slight faux pas however - the curtain separating Club and economy was placed behind row three, where as there were actually four rows of Club passengers. The end result being that the family in row 4 were split up and placed in the spare seats dotted over the three rows in front of the curtain. They did so without too much fuss though.
We pushed back more or less on schedule and made one of the shortest taxi’s to the runway I’ve experienced. More or less just a U-turn from where we had pushed back to. As such, we sat at the end of the runway for more than a few minutes while the safety demo finished and the cabin crew secured the cabin.
Once we were off, the crew were a little slower to get the service starting compared the the flight up - although there were two of them serving just the three rows so things were more relaxed.
Catering options tonight were either a seafood salad or Caesar salad. I went for the Caesar salad. It wasn’t anything too spectacular it must be said. By the time I had finished eating, we were into the descent.
Unusually, there wasn’t any holding this evening. As the clouds were at quite a high level, we were treated to some great views over central London as we turned on to finals.
We touched down, made a pretty speedy taxi over to gate A1 and arrived pretty much on schedule.
As this was the nearest gate to the exit and there were no formalities to be made, within four minutes of arriving on to stand, I was on a shuttle bus heading for the car park.
This flight seemed a lot more relaxed for the crew - mainly because it was a few minutes longer and there were a few less passengers to serve. The Do&Co catering still seemed to be a bit of a step down to when it was introduced. To the point that I’d say I preferred the panini and toasted sandwiches that got so much criticism previously.
Not too much more to be said about this sub 1 hour flight really!
