Transit in London
It’s probably not that often that one would hear the words “I’m transiting in London on my way to Dubai” from the mouth of someone travelling from Australia or SE Asia to the Middle East. Well, I can now say that I have uttered that sentence.
My flight from Hong Kong touched down at 5am and my flight from London to Dubai was scheduled for 21:30. That’s way too long to sit in the BA Galleries Lounge, even if they let me check in so early - which would have been fairly unlikely. So I looked for hotels near Heathrow that offered day rooms. Sticking to Accor, in the hope of status helping with an early check in, I picked the Ibis Styles London Heathrow.
After emerging into the landside arrivals lobby of T3, I spotted a sign pointing towards the Heathrow Central Bus terminal where my research indicated I could get a local public bus for the short journey to the Heathrow Ibis Styles on Bath Rd. The line of hotels along Bath Road would be walking distance…if they had constructed footpaths through the tunnels under the runway and apron that road traffic uses to access T3. Of course they didn’t do that so it’s necessary to take some form of motorised transport to reach the nearby hotels. There is a Heathrow “Hotel Hoppa” bus that runs a couple of routes but not very frequently and at the fairly hefty price of £12 for a return ticket. There’s also a number of local buses that start and end their routes at the Heathrow Central bus terminal which serves T2 and T3. Pre-covid it was free to use these buses within the “airport zone” which included stops along the stretch of Bath Rd where most of the hotels are. That free-zone no longer exists, but it’s still only £1.75 to catch those buses and there’s no need to buy an Oyster Card seeing as you can just use any contactless card on the reader. (Hello Melbourne Myki, this is 2023 calling…or 2014 actually when contactless payment was rolled out in London).
After a lengthy walk through those long tunnels and travelators under Heathrow and a ride in a smelly lift, I emerged into the bus terminal…which despite being attached to one of the world’s busiest airports in one of the world’s financial capitals, was unmistakably a rundown bus terminal. Signage was atrocious but I found my way to the outside stop where I’d be able to catch a 105 bus. I only had to wait a few minutes until a red double decker pulled up and I boarded along with a number of airport workers who must have been coming off a nightshift. The ride to the stop right in front of my hotel only took 5 minutes meaning I was there at 6:00 for my 9:00 check in, with not much hope for an Ibis to offer any favours, even to an Accor Diamond.
When I approached reception, the guy just blankly said he is nightshift. He can’t do anything. Day shift will start at 6:30, ask them. In the meantime I could help myself to instant coffee from a Nescafe machine in the lobby. So I sat myself down at a table with my bad coffee and started typing an instalment of this TR.
Sure enough at 6:30 a couple of new staff showed up, one of whom seemed quite senior as he was berating the night staff about anomalies in the previous night’s accounting - seemingly oblivious to the fact that I and one or two other guests were within ear shot. Once that was all sorted out between them I approached the desk again to enquire about the possibility of early access to my room. Sadly I was attended to by a more junior member of staff who just shrugged her shoulders with a “computer says no” attitude when I gently mentioned early check in is a published benefit for Diamond members. So I returned to my seat and instant coffee and settled in to wait until 9:00. 10 or 15 minutes later the more senior receptionist called me over to say that lo and behold, there actually is a room available for an early check in, though it’s one with a wheelchair accessible bathroom would I be ok with that? I don’t care if you can drive a Mack Truck into the bathroom. I just desperately needed a shower and a lie down at this point. So my credit card was swiped and I was sent towards the lift to find my room on the second floor. So I was in my room a bit after 7:00, and just over an hour after arriving at the hotel.
The room was an OK size for an Ibis and certainly ample as a base for the day. I freshened up and got into bed, unsure if I’d sleep or just rest for a bit then head into London. I was absolutely knackered after a pretty lengthy trip from KL and still hadn’t quite got my land legs back yet seeing as the flight had been a bit choppy for much of its duration and I felt like I was still bumping about a bit.
I drifted off but I wasn’t able to sleep properly because my room - which had no soundproofing - was right next door to a housekeeping closet with staff coming and going, banging doors and trolleys, talking on phones, etc for much of the morning. At lunch time I got up and went for a walk in drizzle which turned into light rain to find some lunch. According to google maps there was a Pakistani food truck just around the corner which got very positive reviews online. I found it easily and had a chicken curry and naan for lunch. The food was decent, and the ambiance - in a small off-airport car park - was rudimentary.
I continued my walk in the rain. It was good to be outside and moving and that definitely helped a bit with the tiredness and jetlag but that was short lived. Once I got back to the room around 2:30 with dreary weather outside and checkout not til 6:00pm I crawled back into bed and this time slept deeply until my alarm went off a bit after 5:00. I got myself out before 6:00 and across the road to the bus stop that served buses going to T5. 10 minutes and £1.75 later I was on the ground floor of T5 and made my way up to departures and the Club World desks.
Check in was nothing premium and security was a study in inefficiency. There weren’t many passengers passing through the Club World security line, but anyone who had liquids - including those in the prescribed sub-100ml containers, packed in a separate clear bag and removed from carry on - had to have their liquids swab tested for explosives and then put inside some cabinet to make sure they weren’t flammable. It took a good 3 - 4 minutes for the dopey looking agent to
slooooowly do this for each passenger. There were 3 people ahead of me waiting for this secondary screening. So it took quarter of an hour to get through an almost deserted security check point and into a manically busy T5.
I knew that my flight was leaving from the satellite terminal so I got the train straight over the the B gates and skipped the larger Galleries lounges in the main section of the terminal to avoid the crowds. The lounge was pretty empty when I arrived. The decor and ambiance were quite nice - better than what I was expecting based on reviews that I’d previously read about BA’s LHR business class lounges. There was a decent selection of hot and cold food, DIY coffee machines and the usual J class standard range of mid-shelf spirits and passable wines, though I stuck to soft drinks seeing as I feeling so tired.
While the food options were ok, the area around the buffet wasn’t well kept. Signs and labels were in front of the wrong items, spills hadn’t been cleaned up and there was just generally no pride in presentation. Almost all my interactions with service staff during my short layover, plus the amount of litter in the streets and overgrown gardens in front of houses in the villages of Sipson and Harlington I passed through on my lunchtime walk, all added up to give the impression that everyone in England has just given up caring post-Brexit.
Salad to start in the lounge. I followed this with slop and rice from the bain marie and some corn chips and salsa.
Looking down to the gate area from my seat in the lounge
Often half an hour or so before I take a flight, I have a look at Expertflyer to see what the close-to-final seat map looks like to gauge how full the flight is in every class. I was slightly alarmed when I saw my pre-selected 6K was showing as one of two empty seats in Club World. I double checked I had searched on the right flight and date. Check! But my seat was still a white square on EF. I cross-referenced MMB on BA. It was still showing 6K. I put this down to one of two things: a glitch in the Expert Flyer data feed, or…a seat change that wasn’t showing yet in BA. A glimmer of hope popped into my mind: is it possible that I’d score a beep at the gate and a new boarding pass in First? Surely not on an award ticket. Then fear and disappointment: if J was oversold that it might also be likely I’d been bumped back to PE seeing as I was on a reward ticket and only mid-tier OW status.
Those who saw the post from a few days ago know the outcome. Indeed my boarding pass was deemed invalid at the gate and a very very harried looking gate agent tore up my boarding pass and eventually printed me a new one. This was another example of LHR inefficiency and service indifference. She was muttering “there’s been a lot of seat changes on this flight” to the queue of 5 or 6 people and couples who were denied boarding. For each one she had to type on a keyboard at one counter then go to the BP printer at another counter to get the new boarding pass and walk back. Many other airlines have the new stack of BP’s pre-printed and sitting in alphabetical or seat order ready to hand over.
The poor woman was also being hassled by people inside the gate area complaining that the lift wasn’t working. None of them appeared to have mobility issues that would preclude going down the escalator to the jetbridge, but they wanted to use the lift and they were stating as much in that typically British middle class way of not wanting to sound cross, but being unable to hide the fact they were a little bit cross. The gate agent just kind of waved them away because she was also a little bit cross with having to deal with printing so many new BPs for people who had scored upgrades.
And so, with a First Class boarding pass for Seat 1K in hand I was just about to experience BA First for the first time and to sit in the first class seat often dubbed (10 years ago when it was newish) “The world’s best business class seat”.