Spring trip to the East Coast (round 4: back to London from DC)

At the end of my two weeks in the US, it was time to head back to London.  I booked myself on another A380 flight, but this time it was from DC to London.  I’m not very good at sleeping on planes, and flights from the East Coast of the US are just not long enough for me to be able to sleep enough to justify upgrading to business class, in general.  For this trip, I opted instead to stay in World Traveller Plus (Premium Economy).  The last time I flew from DC to London was in January on United, and that flight was delayed by several hours (from 10:30 pm to 2 am).  My flight this time around was also delayed, but only until just after midnight.  Also unlike the United flight, the reason for the delay was known because the incoming flight was delayed leaving London.  I got a text before the flight letting me know that the flight was delayed until just after midnight, so they also delayed check-in.  That meant I didn’t even lead for the airport until after 10 pm.  Unlike the United flight, British Airways kept their lounge open longer for all of us on the delayed flight. 

There was basically no line at check-in, but it still took a full 10 minutes to get my bags checked, which was weird.

One of the things about arriving at Dulles so late is that TSA Pre-Check was closed, which was a bummer.  Once I cleared security, I made my way directly to the British Airways Galleries Lounge.  This lounge is interesting because it’s open all day but there are only 2 BA flights (the previous was at around 6 pm).  Earlier in the day, the lounge is a Priority Pass lounge, but my understanding is that they close it briefly to switch it over into a full BA Galleries lounge.  Given the flight was so late, I didn’t take advantage of any of the amenities beyond the comfortable chair, a power plug, and a glass of water.

I enjoyed the view of the terminal, but it was a bit eerily quiet, since the flight was so late.  The lounge actually reminds me a lot of the lounge BA used to have in Manchester, which was also long and thin.  The Manchester lounge, however, was in a circle above a central atrium similar to the United Club in Newark.  I really can’t imagine this space was originally intended to house a lounge when the terminal was built.

Eventually they announced that the flight was boarding, and so they started to close the lounge.  We were all directed to the plane, and I made my way to the back of the upper deck.

I selected one of the aisle seats in the first row so that I could get a seat with a leg rest and no one would recline into me.  The flight was empty enough that I probably could’ve gotten a set of 3 seats to myself if I had been in coach, but I’ve learned from past experience that I don’t sleep very well across the bench on BA flights because the economy arm rests don’t go all the way up, which is annoying.

I don’t really like that in the front row of seats the TV screen flips up from the arm rest, so I just didn’t use the in-flight entertainment, but it wouldn’t have been any different from the selection on the outbound flight.

I skipped the dinner on offer because it was so late, and I’d already had dinner with my friends 6 hours prior.  I slept as best as I could for 6 hours and woke up around when they started serving breakfast.  Breakfast was an unremarkable, small ham and cheese croissant with some yogurt.  I was pretty unimpressed with it.  And the picture of it didn’t turn out for some reason.  Deplaning in Heathrow was pretty quick because the flight was pretty empty; business class was maybe 1/3 full, but I don’t know how full the lower deck was.

In summary, I tried to minimize the amount of time that I was actually involved with this short East Coast flight.  I skipped the food in the BA lounge, since it was so late, but it was great that they kept the lounge open (4/5).  The first row of premium economy seats is great because of the leg rests (4/5).  The breakfast was pretty underwhelming (2/5).  The service was professional, and I slept through most of it, haha (4/5).  The in-flight entertainment was standard (3/5).  The flight was pretty unremarkable (17/25 overall).

From a points perspective, I paid for the ticket with my Amex Platinum card, so I earned 5x Amex Points (around 3 800).  I earned 7 354 Avios from the flight itself as well as 90 tier points.  The total points are worth around $149, for a return of around 20%, which is great.