BA049 LHR-SEA
I was flying out to Seattle for a conference and had decided to travel direct with BA as its just quicker and simpler than going VIA SFO with VS. My company have a Y travel policy but with the shareholder discount I was able to book WT+ both ways for the same price. As an added bonus I upgraded to Club on the way home at the time of booking as the price was a very tempting £31 upgrade. The outbound was still showing an upgrade as about £800 so I decided to decline that offer and hope for an upgrade at the airport as I knew it would be a busy flight. I later checked in online at T-24 expecting to see an upgrade price for the flight but none was offered. I gathered this might have been due to the forthcoming strike plans.
So I arrived at T5 about 11.20am for my flight to Seattle. There were a number of long queues at the Club check-in desks with only about 3 or 4 desks open. Typically there were 3 staff members stood idly near the self check-in desks in the Club area. I really wish they’d see that having staff stood around at these machines doesn’t look too good when there are Club passengers waiting 10 minutes at a desk. Personally. I dislike using the self-check-in machines as I like to speak to a human, and in this instance I wanted to ask about upgrading my outbound so I felt justified in waiting but it was clear that I am not alone. I guess if you are paying Club fares its fair game to expect a human to give you a proper boarding pass.
I finally checked in at the desk and collected my boarding pass for seat 22B in WT+ and enquired about an upgrade. I was advised that I couldn’t use miles at the airport (something I hadn’t been aware of) but the lady offered to look at prices for revenue upgrades. At that point her eyes bulged as she read her screen and advised me that the flight was very overbooked and that the 49 was oversold, severely, in Club (and Economy) and that there wasn’t a seat free to sell me. She said that it looked like a large number of passengers had transferred to this flight from the next day in an attempt to avoid the strike. She apologised for not being able to assist me and suggested I try the south services desk in a few hours as they may have a better idea of final numbers by then in terms of no-shows, etc. I glumly thanked her and headed to fast track which was reasonably fast apart from the number of special assistance passengers that were being passed through.
I headed to the South Galleries lounge and picked up a couple of bottles of water from Boots on the way. I found a nice quiet corner and caught up on email and the t’interweb for about an hour, availing myself of one of the warm spicy tuna subs they were offering. I hadn’t been feeling very well for the past few days so I stuck to water and didn’t touch the fizz.
I then headed down to the south services desk to see whether I would be able to upgrade. The assistant behind the counter firstly had a job finding a fare code for my booking. She said that as it was a shareholder ticket it wasn’t coming up with the original fare bucket. Finally she said she had found it and that there was one free seat in Club now and I could have it for a smidgen over £3000. I had to laugh. For a one way upgrade that is ridiculous. She did say that there were seats in First but I said I didn’t want to know the price. I asked how the fare was calculated as I said that would have been a full J and she replied that the fare was calculated based on upgrade prices at the time of booking which I knew was nonsense as the full club fare when I booked my flight was not over £3000 for the return, never mind one way. I said that she must be quoting me a full fare one way J but she repeatedly denied it. I thanked her for her time and politely declined the offer, resigning myself to flying in W. I headed over to the satellite B terminal as the Seattle flight was now showing as departing from there.
After a short train ride to the satellite terminal I headed to the Galleries lounge there and handed over my boarding pass. The lady at the desk smiled at me and said ‘oh, your seat has been changed Mrs M’ to which I retorted ‘I hope forward and not backwards’. She replied in the affirmative and printed me a new boarding pass for 10B, thanked me for flying British Airways, especially with the proposed strike action and bade me a good day. I was quite stunned as it was less than 5 minutes ago that I was at the desk enquiring about the upgrade so I am not sure when the good deed took place or what influenced it but I was very glad that it did. I can only assume that they had to shift passengers from Y to W as Y was overbooked, meaning that W was now full and needing to move W pax to J and J pax to F. BA try to stick to one class bumps which must make for a lot of work for the ground staff, but hey, I was happy!
As I now had a J boarding pass I thought I would see if I could sit in one of the massage chairs at the Elemis spa but on arriving at the desk there were no staff to be seen. By the time one appeared they had no appointments in the time before my flight which was a bit of a shame but I was still counting myself very mucky for the upgrade. I had a cup of tea and relaxed in the smaller but just as nice Galleries in Satellite B while waiting for the call.
Boarding was soon announced and I headed to the gate where some enhanced screening was taking place. I pitched up to Fasttrak but each passenger had to have their hand baggage searched and another body search. As I was waiting for a free security person I commented to the chap marshalling the passengers that this must take ages for a full flight. He smiled and commented ‘you have no idea!’. I waited about 10 minutes and had my bag emptied, laptop opened and phone turned on. A quick pat down and I was told to join the long boarding queue. I asked where fast track was and was told that it was ‘operating in a limited capacity’. I said that no, it wasn’t operating at all as all passengers were to join a solitary queue after the bag search. I met up with a couple of colleagues in the queue and after waiting a while I was handing over my boarding pass and walking down the airbridge.
Seat 10B is in the first row of seats in Club on the 777. The seats are right behind the washrooms but they do have lots of additional legroom. As I have a bladder the size of a walnut I don’t mind being close to the washrooms so the seat suited me perfectly, and it was an aisle seat too. I have aisle seat in my BA profile so I don’t know whether that helped here but I was glad to have aisle access. I settled in to my seat and realised the drawback of sitting here, as we were boarding through the Club doors all the passengers have to walk past me to board, and as I had a number of colleagues on this flight I had to do a number of ‘Oh hello’s’.
One thing I noticed was that while waiting for everyone to board I reclined my seat to read the newspapers. Just before take off a crew member came over to my seat and pressed the button to put it upright. She didn’t actually say anything to me which I thought was very rude but I appreciate that they were trying to secure the cabin for imminent take-off. I had (obviously erroneously) presumed that you could fly in recline mode as per VS but this does not seem to be the case. We then finally took off, flying north over Scotland and the Isle of Skye. Flight time was 9 hours 55 minutes.
Hot towels and amenity kits were handed out after take-off, then a drink, then the menus. Today’s choices were as follows:
Starters
Smoked organic sturgeon with blinis and crème fraiche
Tomato and Mozzarella terrine with white gazpacho
Fresh seasonal salad
Main
Fillet steak with spring onion mash and roast root vegetables
Vineet Bhatias chicken tikka masala with lemon and cashew pilau
Spinach and ricotta cannelloni
Chilled main course salad with lemon-infused salmon
Dessert
Mocha cheesecake
Barbers 1833 Blacksticks white cheese with savoury biscuits
Fruit
I plumped for the terrine and the chicken. Slightly disappointed not to see a gloop on offer. That is one thing I like about VS, but then I do like my soups. Another drinks round was offered before lunch was served. Incidentally, I heard the crew member say to a passenger a few rows back that they were out of chicken, so it’s not just VS who have issues with meal choices.
My starter arrived and I was given the sturgeon, so I pointed this out to the crew who quickly swapped it around. The terrine was okay but it was very cold, still chilled really and so the flavours were just absent.
The curry was nice though, although I couldn’t finish it off.
The crew serving were very efficient and there seemed to be a lot of them in the Club cabin.
The trio of Lily O’Briens chocolates that used to be provided have been downsized to a single large chocolate, so I polished it off and sat back to watch the IFE. It was only then that I noticed that we didn’t have AVOD. I know there are a number of 777s without AVOD as we had one when we went to TLV. I’d of course missed the start of the films so watched ‘Up in the Air’ (the film starring George Clooney that features a frequent flyer focused on collecting airmiles) from the middle, then watched a few episodes of Frasier while waiting for all the films to start again. I started to feel tired so I reclined my seat a little, then a little more, then had a little doze.
I must have been asleep for an hour or two when I was woken by my seat mate putting their window blind up for a moment. The cabin had been dimmed after the meal service so it was like a beacon. I tried to go back to sleep but a short while later she did it again. By the third time I was close to shouting at her in a John Cleese style to ask what exactly she hoped to see out there? Given we were flying over northern Canada there were certainly not going to be any herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically.
I was awake at this point so I put the TV back on and of course I had missed the beginning of the film again but I managed to catch it at an earlier point.
I stretched my legs and went to investigate the Club Kitchen. There were several meals laid out, Covent Garden soups, chocolate bars, crisps, fruit, nuts and a number of other things. I took a banana as I knew afternoon tea would be coming shortly.
I watched a bit more of the IFE having managed to find the comedy channel that had a Jo Brand special.
Afternoon Tea started to make its way through the cabin. Sandwiches first. BA serve their sandwiches wrapped, which does make for freshness but the presentation then isn’t great. I guess its nice if you want to take the sandwiches with you when you go but I do wonder why they have not considered having the crew unwrap and plate them. I nibbled on the sandwiches but they were not great, though I don’t particularly like sandwiches anyway. Shortly after the sandwiches came the scones, so I had a nice warm scone with clotted cream and jam with a cup of tea. Perfect.
The crew came around with customs forms and shortly afterwards we started to make our decent into SEA-TAC. We were soon on the ground with a very smooth landing and straight to a gate. Less than 30 minutes later I was in a cab to the hotel.
Thoughts
I do still like Club a lot. I like the seat, I just find it suits me more for sleeping. I still also find the service onboard with BA to be better than VS in general. VS are much more personable but BA seem more professional. I haven’t yet seen a BA crew member reading OK or Heat magazine in the galley.
VS win with the flexibility of miles redemptions at the airport. BA aim for the regular J traveller and it seems (unless I am missing something) that it isn’t easy to upgrade at the airport. No miles upgrades and ‘on the day’ prices don’t seem to exist as they do with VS. I have had some high W-J prices with VS when asking in the Clubhouse but never that high. I was fortunate in getting my upgrade but this experience has highlighted to me how complicated things may be if I ever booked WT+ and later wanted to upgrade.
All in all, another good BA flight. I just hope for similar when I fly home as my return flight is during the proposed strike period.
