An autumn escape (part 3: London to New York)

After a nice overnight layover in London, I was off on the next leg of my trip!  This time to the United States for the main part of my trip.  It took a couple tries to get this trip booked correctly because flights kept getting cancelled or moved.  In total, three flight changes happened, and two calls to American Airlines were needed.  When the dust settled, I had a flight from Stockholm to London on 21 October, then this flight (BA175/AA6936) from London to New York in the new Club Suites on 22 October, and finally an American Airlines flight (AA2305) from New York to San Francisco on 22 October as well. 

To get to the airport, I took a taxi to London’s Paddington station and then took the Heathrow express the rest of the way.  The train is running a reduced schedule of every 30 minutes, instead of the usual every 15 minutes.  The train was relatively empty, which was nice.  The terminal 5 check-in area is massive and so was relatively empty, given the limited number of flights.  The priority check-in area was located at the far end of the terminal from the Heathrow Express entrance, beside the BA First Check-in.  Had I been travelling with Krister, we could’ve used the first check-in because of his BA Gold card. Upon clearing security, I made my way to the British Airways Galleries lounge.  This time, I was on the upper floor, which is the business lounge.  I had access since I was flying in business and because after the flights to Sweden, I hit BA Silver status (Oneworld Sapphire).  The Galleries business lounge is much bigger than the First lounge, but there was still ample seating.  Like in the Galleries First lounge, food was brought to the table.  I ordered a bacon butty, a fruit bowl, and a pain au chocolat as my breakfast.  I also got a buck’s fizz (the British version of a mimosa) because why not.

My flight departed from a satellite concourse, so I had to make my way to the plane earlier than I would have liked.  Waiting for me there, however, was one of British Airways’ beautiful, refurbished 777s (in this case G-VIIS), which have the new Club Suites Business Class.  The gate was one of the ones equipped to handle the A380, which is to say it had up to three jet bridges.  However, our flight was extremely empty, like many international flights are currently.  Like other BA flights, this one was boarded back to front to minimize movement.  Specifically, they boarded rows 20-40 (i.e. World Traveller Plus and World Traveller) and then the rest of the plane (First and Club World).  In total, there were only maybe a dozen people in Club World, which would normally seat around 50. 

I had assigned myself seat 12A to try to maximize my distance from other people, and since the seats are all effectively the same, there wasn’t really any other consideration.  A major reason for selecting this flight was, in fact, the chance to try out the Club Suite.  I had previously flown BA Club World to Seoul with Krister in Feb 2019.  The old seat was perfectly fine, since it was still a lie-flat, but this new seat makes the old yin-yang Club World seat seem like a (lie-flat) premium economy seat.  There was a ton of storage space in the seat, the TV was big, and the tray table was new and sturdy.

We were actually delayed slightly on takeoff because they were finishing up some paperwork.  I think it might just be that they were waiting for their ‘expected’ take-off slot from Heathrow so that they’d have the correct landing slot at JFK.  Based on how empty it was at JFK, I think if we’d landed early, border control wouldn’t have been open yet.

Shortly after takeoff, the in-flight service began.  Like on all other BA flights, the food was served in prepared Do & Co boxes. Since we hadn’t taken off immediately after boarding, the food was served pretty close to noon.  But, since this was (technically) a morning flight, I went for another mimosa.  Everything I’d read said the food would be served cold (and actually shortly after this flight, BA announced the return of hot food).  It actually turned out that the main dish was served cold, and a side panini was served hot.  The cold meal served was poke, which makes sense as something to be served cold.  This was the first time I’d ever been served poke on a plane, and as a big fan of poke, it was great!  The choices were chicken or tofu; I imagine typical raw fish poke would be unexpected on a transatlantic flight.  The chicken was a bit bland, like what you’d get for a grocery store salad, but the sauce on the poke perked it right up.  The pickled vegetables were great, and the portion was good.  I wasn’t actually very hungry after the breakfast in the lounge, so I ate it in separate courses.  The cheese and chocolate mousse sides made for tiny fun desserts, but I would’ve liked more grapes to go with the cheese.  The chocolate mousse was the same as the flight from Stockholm, but the size was more proportional here.

After my meal, I took the opportunity to relax and ended up taking a short nap.  The seat was very comfortable in bed mode.  Because of COVID, they only gave out a pillow and a blanket and not a separate comforter for the seat.  I think it would’ve been nice on an overnight flight but wasn’t needed for such this relatively short daytime flight.  The addition of a door was a nice feature to add to this reverse-herring bone seat.  The door itself did not add much privacy because the walls around the seats were relatively short.  The door also doesn’t close all the way by design, presumably to avoid any rattling.  The best part of the door though is that even when closed, the wall around the seat made it very private.

About two hours before arrival, they came through to bring a second meal box.  This one contained a hot panini, which was well-made and had a couple small snacks with it.  Considering I was expecting two cold meals, the fact that I had poke and two warm sandwiches was a welcome surprise!  Because flights to London and flights to New York generally have extra time worked into their booked-off flight times, we landed right on time. 

Upon arrival, I cleared global entry effectively instantly and then waited for my bag to arrive.  Since there were only about 30 of us from that flight, and it was the only flight arrival around then, border control x-rayed all of our bags before we exited baggage claim.  Upon exiting, I made my way to terminal 8 for my American Airlines flight to San Francisco.

In summary, this Club World flight with Club Suites was excellent.  The check-in, security, and lounge experience were great.  I really hope BA keeps the table service in the lounges post-pandemic (5/5).  This seat beats out the United Polaris seat for me, as they’re all the same and so one needn’t worry about getting a sub-par seat.  The door was fun, but didn’t give much additional privacy except when in bed mode, but it felt more open and spacious than the Polaris seat (5/5).  The boxed Do&Co meals were actually really good and both meals had a warm portion, which was unexpected and definitely welcome (5/5).  The service on the flight was great; with so few passengers, they came by almost too frequently, haha (5/5).  The in-flight entertainment was good, given the dearth of new movies.  The TV shows and having to pay for any WiFi left a bit to be desired, however (4/5).  Overall, the flight gets a 24/25, which is to say, it was a great flight, but given the on-going pandemic, it was an amazing flight.

From a points perspective, this flight netted me 140 tier points on BA (which is the same for amount that any flight from 2000 – 6000 miles will earn you).  In addition, I earned 3 452 base Avios (the mileage of the flight) plus a ‘tier bonus’ of 1 726 Avios (50% because I’m now BA silver).  Since I booked this as part of an American Airlines ticket (AA6936), I earned a ‘cabin bonus’ of 863 Avios (25%).  Had I booked this on a BA ticket, I would have earned additional ‘cabin bonus’ Avios.