JapesUK

This months fun and frolics is a whole series of trips to Bucharest.

There is a very long back story to this which I will not bore everyone with but suffice to say that due to a whole series of youthful misadventures I have worn dentures for the past 40 years. A recent conversation between colleagues in Romania and the UK opened my eyes to the concept of dental tourism and after a bit of research I had a ‘now or never’ decision as to whether I should embark on what would effectively be a complete dental rebuild. Clearly given this trip report, the decision was ‘now’!

Since March of this year I have been back and forth to Bucharest six times for many various procedures and remedial work, and the squeamish should skip to the next paragraph. In total I have spent at least 40 hours in the chair and have had 4 bone grafts - both natural and artificial, 8 implants, 9 root canals, 16 pieces of metal in my jaw, some of which were later removed again, many extractions, and various bits lasered, ground, scoured, sutured, reopened, re-sutured, and polished. I have had a team of six dentists doing this work including my overarching consulting dentist, 2 surgeons, a hygienist, an orthodontist, and a periodontist, plus all of the supporting personnel. Each and every one of them has been amazing. The intrusive work is now complete and we are on to the Hollywood Smile part

All of this travel meant that I achieved BA executive club gold status organically before my tier year ended in September. This upcoming tranche of travel will give me BA gold status again through to September 2025.

The trip report will cover all of these backward and forwards to Bucharest. The last three weeks will be predominantly flight and lounge reports, but there will be quite a bit of tourism next week if all goes to plan. That plan is:

Return home Friday by train from Guildford as early as possible to get laundry, repacking, etc done after being away from home for the past 13 days
BA Holiday Saturday-Friday with 2 planned dentist appointments Monday and Thursday (480 tier points)
Normal flight booking the following Friday to Sunday, with one dentist appointment Saturday (240 tier points)
BA holiday covering the following 2 weekends (960 Tier points)
- Friday NCL-LHR-OTP, Sunday OTP-LHR/LCY-EDI EDI-NCL LNER with one dentist appointment Saturday
- And finally Thursday NCL-EDI LNER, Friday EDI-LHR-OTP, Sunday OTP-LHR-NCL with 1 back-up/check-up dentist appointment Saturday

In the last round of BA schedule changes a lot of my flights were cancelled and rescheduled so some of the flight timings will seem odd, it was not my first choice! It does, however, mean there will be at least one complete lounge safari in T3 which will be fun for me and, I hope, interesting to anyone reading the report.

Signing off for now, see you all on Saturday Morning.

JapesUK

Just hit the limit for signature size so here are my previous trip report links:

Krakow Kraziness

Budapest long weekend

Birmingham, Business, and Balti

A Short Sibiu Sojourn

Fabo.sk

1/3rd way into the lead post and suddenly I have a strong urge to pop into the bathroom for a quick brush.

JapesUK

And so you should

Tocsin

I at first mis-read that as 'overcharging consulting dentist' - wouldn't want to say that until the work was complete!

rapidex

If this goes to plan I'll eat my hat. It will be interesting to see how you cope. The very best of luck.

JapesUK

I am an eternal optimist. I have also found a supplier of edible hats

Fabo.sk

Does your supplier of, ehm, edible hats, have anything to do with the fact you need to travel to Bucharest so often?

JapesUK

Ha ha ha, I honestly laughed out loud to that, touché

JapesUK

And we’re off! The taxi was almost 30 minutes early and both fast track and security were quick and painless….




…. except that the fast track security has a new mass scanner fitted on the left hand side and I think it need tuning as it was triggering for absolutely everyone! Maybe it was set up for skinny southerners

once past the pat down it was straight to the lounge and, as I had an hour to kill, I upgraded into Aspire Plus.

Aspire have announced a major expansion of the Newcastle lounge into the old BA lounge space and that work is now commencing. As a result the plus lounge has shrunk and no longer has direct access to the lavatories. It’s all in a good cause and I’m looking forward to seeing the new 3 tier lounge product with table service promised for the top end lounge offering.

JapesUK

It feels too early for breakfast this morning, but it’s never too early for chocolate and fizz




The chap on the table next to me has just loaded three sealed bottles of Moretti into his hand luggage, the first time I’ve ever seen anyone doing a take out in the Newcastle lounge.

Roughly thirty minutes before it’s time to go to gate so time to settle in and enjoy the ambience

JapesUK

Our departure gate is gate 3 again and it must have opened fairly early as the priority lane was empty when I arrived, it was straight through and onto the plane. A younger crew this morning, remarkably cheerful for the time of the day, no doubly assisted by the fact that it’s their only flight today.

This is the first of my trips to fall victim to last months schedule changes and instead of being on the now cancelled BA1327 at 10:05 I’m on the 06:05 BA1321.

This means two things, firstly I have lost the leggy luxury of row 1 and have been exiled into knee knocking row 6, and secondly that I will have roughly six hours at leisure in Heathrow T3.


I have access to at least ten lounges in T3 through a combination of cards, status, and lounge schemes. I’m not going to try to visit them all today as I have a couple of even longer transits coming up, but I think a first class lounge safari may be the order of the day along with a proper tour of T3. I have not really explored all of the terminal before, normally heading straight to lounge and then departure gate.

Everyone is aboard, the door is closed and we’re 7 minutes to scheduled departure.

Next stop, LHR T5 and the unmitigated joy that is the trip over to T3.

JapesUK

Some amusement during the safety briefing when the FA struggled to tie the double bow and was then four steps behind for the remainder of the life jacket demo. Had the plane gone for a swim I suspect anyone paying attention would have pulled the whistle to inflate and blown into the tube for attention

A full flight this morning, unsurprising given the previously mentioned cancellation of the 10:05. With 7 rows in business and well over ten minutes after take off before the in flight service started it was pretty rushed by the time they reached the back of the section with the pilot coming on to advise that we were over birmingham and starting our descent before everyone was served.

Full English or mushroom omelette offered and so the full English it was, along with the morning trinity of coffee, orange juice, and fizz. No time for a top up, crew only just managed to clear the section before being called to their seats.







Some great views of london on the approach and we landed nice and early at 07:08

JapesUK

T5 to T3 was a long run this morning, the bus took a while to arrive, there were a stack of people coming onboard at T5B, people were slow moving down the bus, slow getting off, basically just slow.

T3 security seemed to be particularly stringent too, took a while to get through as the scanner was backing up due to the time each body search was taking.

From landing to arrival in the lounge has been 80 minutes with hand baggage only, not the worst ever but far from great.

Which brings me to first stop of the day, the American Airlines First Class Lounge. The American lounge always seems to come last in any first class lounge comparisons but I think they all have their advantages and reasons for visiting and, with the American lounge, it is the breakfast pancakes which have become a habit for me when passing through T3 early.




Simple, but delicious, and decent coffee too.

JapesUK

The lounge itself doesn’t really feel first class, and the buffet options are also a bit average. Judge for yourself….














Gentleman’s facilities

View from the lounge


The portion sizes of the baked beans always amuse me, they clearly don’t get many Geordies visiting , based on my experience in the Newcastle lounge all of the AA bean pots would make half an average serving

Some of the other things I like about this lounge is that the free pour Moët is situated immediately on entry, it is your welcome to the lounge, alongside the sweetie stall. I believe that pre-Covid they used to provide little sweetie bags on the sweetie stall for people to fill up, it feels a shame that they don’t do that any longer. I may have snaffled a couple of sherbet lemons for later!





Another facet to the lounge is the at seat dining area where there are a dozen or so tables for two, and this is where I came for my morning pancakes and maple syrup.






One final observation on the AA first lounge, the staff are unfailingly pleasant and apparently cheerful, not something I expect to say about the BA lounge when we visit later!

And on that note it’s time to enjoy the fizz and the coffee for a little while before wandering off. Next stop, eventually, BA first lounge.