#939246 by Fuzzy14
23 Oct 2017, 13:04
Family of 5 off to the States

I don’t log every flight I take as most are by-the-book domestic flights for business but making the exception here as the kids are in tow, and they always make the flights more interesting!

This was originally booked a Florida summer holiday end June, we were unable to get decent flight prices with Virgin direct from Glasgow or Manchester but Gatwick to Tampa was coming up at a bargain price so despite having a nightmare with BA several years ago, we decided to give them another go as the kids now older and seasoned long haul travellers. However, our plans fell apart when both myself and my wife lost our jobs at the same time, we both got sorted with new positions reasonably quickly but felt it best to postpone the holiday until later. BA were rather brilliant at moving the whole thing about.

So our story begins at 7.30pm we jumped in a taxi for the 5-minute ride to the airport, arriving much earlier than I normally would for a 2145 domestic flight but we had bags to get checked in. No queue at the BA desks at this time of night, we’d already did online check-in at T-24 but it wouldn’t let me print my boarding pass for the 2nd leg so I suspected I had been chosen for additional security. With the plane arriving so late at Gatwick we suspected the twilight check-in for the next leg would be shut (it was) however the agent at Glasgow was able to book our cases all the way through to Tampa. Result! This gave us extra time in our beds and saved a lot of hauling about. Really pleased.

Apparently there are “rules” about letting kids “run riot in an airport” while the parents are “drinking” in the BA lounge and my access couldn’t get everybody in together so we all sat in the Beardmore restaurant and had a bite to eat, killing time with iPads and wifi before making the long walk down the domestic pier to a deserted gate. I had to ask the staff if they were boarding it was so eerily quiet. Both the airport and the plane were fairly quiet at this time of night especially once the Emirates was called, the second hand ex-Brazilian A320s BA now employ on the GLA-LGW route maybe at 70% capacity and mostly full of business day trippers making their way home. We occupied the whole of row 5, 6 seats between the 5 of us.

Flight took off 10 minutes early down runway 23, service these days is now a cash bar but you can also use Avios to purchase drinks, since I’ve got hundreds of thousands of them I spent 500 on a beer and 600 for a wine for Mrs Fuzzy. A wonderfully clear night, great views of Heathrow as we passed over Reading and looped round to land on Gatwick’s runway 27. An outstanding, efficient, utterly ordinary and by the book flight.

As usual for this flight, it landed at an international pier for the next morning flight so we had to get bussed to the domestic arrivals. South terminal was reasonably alive at 11pm, took the monorail to the North terminal and crossed the road into the Premier Inn. Was in bed by 2315.
#939248 by Sealink
23 Oct 2017, 13:38
I've been on the late flight to Gatters and it's always pretty quiet.

The bus to domestic arrivals used to annoy me but actually its faster than international arrivals (even excluding passport control)
#939251 by marshy11
23 Oct 2017, 14:33
Sounds like the perfect start. I'm just off to read the other.

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