• Flying to Orlando via LGW for a change
Once again it’s time for my now annual family trip to Orlando. I actually think my kids have grown up being documented in V-Flyer trip reports! The wee one was only 11 weeks old when he appeared in his first TR and now here he is a veteran long haul traveller and occupying his own seat…
The last few times we’ve taken the direct flight GLA-MCO with Virgin Atlantic but despite trying to book early we just couldn’t get any kind of sensible flight prices, on average £1200 more than what we usually pay. And that’s with Glasgow now operating a Jumbo service.
So we shopped around and found we could get the flights much (thousands) cheaper going via LGW mainly due to England having different school holidays from Scotland, and while Virgin and BA where roughly the same price from LGW the thought of having to transfer all the suitcases myself wasn’t appealing so I took the BA through ticket. This highlights the problem with Little Red flying only to LHR – if they flew to Gatwick from Glasgow or Edinburgh (or code-shared with EasyJet) I would have booked Virgin no question. Also interestingly going via LGW didn’t add that much time to the overall door-to-door time.
Despite the BA website saying that we couldn’t due to children on the ticket, I managed to do the online check-in for both flights even though it was 26 hours to the second flight. Our seats had already been pre-booked which is free on BA domestic but not for our next long-haul leg
but I managed to change the random seat selection to give us the coveted bulkhead seats for the second flight which are really necessary with an active 2 year old! 
We arrived by taxi at the airport at 8am for the 9.20am flight, the airport only 5 minutes from my house. There was a reasonable queue at the BA check-in desk, took 15 minutes to drop off the bags at the “fast” bag drop but coincidentally met up with an old friend in the queue so it went quick.Spoke to the staff to double-check the bags would automatically be transferred and we didn’t have to check-in for LGW-MCO. We had 4 suitcases (well under the allowance), the toddler’s bulky car seat and the buggy (both bubble wrapped and taped up.) I don’t recommend taking baby buggies to the gate as it increases the chance of damage/loss and he’s fairly happy running about an airport anyway. Booster car seats for the older two were fitted inside suitcases although these can get carried free of charge in addition to your luggage allowance.
No point hanging about so made our way up to security. We are flying WT+ however this is not available on the domestic leg (J ticket) so we are given lounge access at Glasgow instead (but curiously not at Gatwick.) We were entitled to use the priority security lane although it didn’t make any difference as there was no queue! The young one still takes a bottle of milk so these were checked by security, we ignored the duty free section (as it’s a domestic flight) and made our way to the new BA Galleries lounge. The old lounge was at the end of the domestic pier but the new one is the old British Midland one halfway down the pier.
Despite it being rush hour with 3 BA London bound planes due to depart the lounge was quiet, we easily got a nice table especially now it’s double the size. The lounge is very nicely decorated with leather seats and a whisky snug which I’d like to get to know better next time I’m travelling alone.
The kids antics got a few laughs from the fellow travellers, there wasn’t any tutting from the business types and we felt quite welcome. Threw down some breakfast (cereal, fresh orange, croissants) then it was time to board.The best advice I normally give as a parent is board last to allow the kids to run off steam and minimise confined time however on this occasion we wanted to be sure of overhead luggage space which is notoriously bad on this route due to day-trippers so we made sure we weren’t last on board. BA normally employ a 24 year old ex-Dan Air 737-400 (seriously) on this route however these are being phased out in favour of second hand ex-Brazilian Airbus A319s. We had the Airbus, which was cleaner and fresher. With 5 of us and kids fighting over who gets the window seat I’d booked (for free) seats 6ABC and 7AB, I ended up sitting next to part of an extended family with a baby who were also travelling to Orlando. The flight was full as usual.
Pushed back and taxied down to the far end, took off relatively on time on runway 23 (the usual for the prevailing westerly winds at Glasgow), kids were handed their iPads once up in the air which kept them quiet (no inflight entertainment onboard). At 9.20am I was expecting a deli bag (hence we filled up in the lounge) but BA served a cooked breakfast bacon, sausage, beans and scrambled egg, tea, coffee which we struggled to eat!
We managed to stop the kids leaving their seats and soon it was time to land at Gatwick, straight in and arriving early given that the published 1hr 30min flight time is rather generous. My ears gave me a lot of pain on descent, I haven’t had issues like that since I was a kid but they just cleared before landing. On touch down the curtain divider which is mounted on ceiling rails came loose and slid forward, whacking me on the back of the head (since I’m the tallest), it was only after I got off I realised I had a bump and was slightly bleeding but it soon stopped.
We let the first few rows get off (busy business people who would trample over kids to get where they need to go) then we got off only to realise we had parked at the international satellite so had to get on busses back to the main north terminal. We asked at the baggage reclaim which way to go for transfers, we walked through a set of doors only to realised we’d left airside so had to make our way back through security and onward to the No.1 Lounge where I had a reservation.
Overall pretty good flight, newer plane made a difference, cabin crew interaction non-existent because it was so short and busy, lounge very good.
Onwards…
