80 tier points for a ‘medium-haul’ intra-European Club Europe flight

After a delightful time at the Marmorosch Hotel in Bucharest, it was time for me to return to London.  Since all British Airways flights are to/from London, I knew the plane I’d be on was coming from London and immediately turning around, so I had a reasonable expectation that the flight would be pretty much identical to my outbound flight once on the plane.  Since I had had a good outbound flight, this was a good thing.  However, British Airways isn’t really known for having a good ground experience at airports that are not part of its core business (i.e. places that are not major destinations or Oneworld hubs).  Bucharest airport has two lounges: one for TAROM and one general lounge.  BA doesn’t provide lounge access to either of them, and Priority Pass doesn’t work at either of them either.  I had thought this was strange, but when I got to the airport and saw how small the lounges were and how crowded they were, I wasn’t surprised that access was relatively limited.

I knew this going in, so I didn’t arrive particularly early at the airport, since I also wasn’t checking a bag.  I passed the time shopping and sitting at the gate area.  The flight was a bit delayed boarding and leaving, which the pilots blamed on a late arriving aircraft, but as far as I could tell from FlightRadar24, the incoming flight had actually landed early.  We did end up landing basically on time, so it was just a typical case of the plane needing to wait for its proper landing slot at Heathrow.

I boarded somewhere in the middle of the pack because of gate lice.  One of said lice, who was in group 3 with his BA Bronze membership, definitely checked out the boarding pass on my phone, saw it was gold, and then immediately butt in front of me. I was pretty unimpressed.

I had selected seat 1D, which is my preferred seat on narrowbody aircraft.  The one downside to bulkhead seats is that the overhead storage can sometimes be problematic, but I got lucky.  Boarding took longer to complete than I would’ve expected it to, but eventually we pushed back and got in line for takeoff.  One thing that was a lot of fun on this flight was that they had tiny Club Europe menus! This was the first time I’d had a Club Europe menu before, so I was very excited.

Like on the flight to Bucharest, the meal service proceeded at a leisurely pace.  Drinks came through first.   I started with a glass of Nicolas Feuillatte Réserve Exclusive NV Champagne and a gin & tonic. After a pause and some drink refills, the meal was served. 

Like other Club Europe flights, the meal was served on one tray.  I ordered the roasted vegetable tagine, which was the vegetarian option.  The chicken and bean salad option was served cold.  My tagine was served with coleslaw as a starter.  In addition, a small cheese plate consisting of two British cheese: Somerset Camembert and Croxton Manor cheddar, as well as fig relish, was served.  The dessert was a small passion fruit mousse, which like most Do&Co desserts was excellent. 

After the meal service, they came through for another round of drinks, and further refills were offered on demand. After about 2 hours in flight, they began to prepare for landing.  Like with trying to get on the plane, it was not the smoothest preparation I’ve seen.  In classic entitled boomer fashion, one of the Club Europe passengers wouldn’t put away his laptop immediately when asked.  He was quite annoying about it, and it was wholly unnecessary, but he finally relented when the flight attendants basically said that they’d have police waiting for the plane when it landed if necessary.

After that, landing proceeded uneventfully, as desired.

In summary, this Club Europe flight from Bucharest was everything the flight to Bucharest was but executed better once in the air.  British Airways doesn’t offer lounge access in Bucharest, and there’s no Priority Pass lounge.  The gate agents, who I don’t think work for BA, had 0 success in controlling the boarding, which was executed extremely poorly (0/5).  Like the previous flight, the first row of BA Club Europe is excellent, but this time I didn’t get the row to myself (4/5).   The roasted vegetable tagine was a great vegetarian option and definitely welcome after having no lounge access (4/5).  The service was great as well, and I appreciated that it wasn’t rushed over the flight (5/5).  The plane offers WiFi and in-flight power, which is pretty good within Europe (4/5).  Overall, the flight gets a 17/25, which is to say it was a great flight, once I was actually on the plane.

I booked this flight for a remarkably low price of £130, which I charged to my Platinum Card to earn 5x points.  I also used a £50 voucher I got from my delayed baggage issue to Austin.  The flight earned me 4 575 Avios and 80 tier points.  I earned about $66 worth of Avios/Amex points back for a return of 67% after factoring in the voucher, which is amazing.