Thanksgiving 2023 EuroTrip: Part 1 (SFO-LHR)

It’s time to begin the trip! As is often the case now, I started my journey at SFO. It’s not my favorite airport (that falls to LAX actually), but it is set up very efficiently, which is important in an airport. British Airways uses International Terminal A, which shares an entry hall with International Terminal G, but they are not connected airside.

I flew a 777-300 this evening equipped with Club Suites and would be flying an A380 with Club Dorms on the way home, so I can do a pretty direct comparison of these two products finally.

Security was appropriately efficient, and I made my way directly for the British Airways lounge. I’ve actually spent very little time in this terminal because the BA lounge is right beside the gates they use.

In this case, they were using A5, the best part of which is that you can board the plane directly from the BA lounge, so I spent even less time in the terminal than usual, haha.

Inside the lounge was a pretty short departure board…

Since my aircraft this evening was a 777 and not an A380, the lounge was much less busy than in June.

My plane was parked right outside the lounge, so I took a seat directly in front of it and then went to go get a pre-flight snack.

The BA lounge consists of two main rooms. One has the self-serve drinks area and hot food options. The options were appropriate for a British Airways flight and consisted of garlic chicken and a chickpea curry.

Along with falafel balls and spring rolls.

And then soup.

The second room has much more seating as well as the cold food selection.

I opted for some of both! The food at this lounge is way better than at the Admirals Club in T1. The real winner for me was the cranberry walnut bread.

The lounge also has a few options made to order:

I opted for the Fig Tartine, which was excellent.

The Fig Tartine was probably the best small plate I’ve ever had in a BA lounge.

Boarding began roughly on-time, and everyone in the lounge was able to board directly through a door beside the lounge’s departure screen. Immediately after going through that doorway, we merged with the rest of the traffic. Since the gate can handle A380s, there were three jet bridges total, but only two were in use. There was a dedicated jet bridge for the front Club World cabin.

I was in seat 1F, which is generally my favorite seat on a wide-body plane. This was actually only my third time in a Club Suite, since I have often been on 787-9s and A380s to the US, none of which at the time had Club Suites.

The storage around the seat is great, and the TV is modern and sharp.

There’s no shortage of space, and I was given a welcome glass of champagne.

At my seat was the standard Club World menu.

After perusing the menu, I settled in for take-off. The plane was very full, so we got a big takeoff roll.

After takeoff, the on-board service began with a cocktail (a gin zing in my case).

Next came the appetizer course. I ordered the smoked salmon, which was pretty good (and realistically hard to mess up…)

Next came the paneer tikka, which is a staple of British cuisine.

Finally, for dessert, I just had the fruit plate, which is always a safe option before bed.

Since this was a long overnight flight, I opted to sleep as much as I could. For better or worse, upon arrival in London, I’d be connecting onto a second flight to Venice, so it wasn’t like I really needed to be very awake. 

Post-pandemic, BA’s in-flight entertainment selection has definitely improved. I remember back in 2020 and 2021 that BA had basically no movies because they focused more on new releases than old favorites. That’s now balanced out a bit more because movies are being released again (obviously) and their systems have more old favorites now.

After sleeping for about 6 hours, it was time for breakfast. I ordered the pancake option because I don’t really like plane omelets, and a full English breakfast is always just too much for me.

Breakfast started with a fruit plate, which came with some chia yogurt that was the highlight of the course for me. I also had some English breakfast tea with it to get into the spirit of London or something.

I had selected the pancakes, and the flight attendant proactively offered me some additional fruit to go with the pancakes because when he was plating the dish, he just thought the pancakes looked quite sad. And they do:

I appreciate the honesty that you get out of a lot of British Airways’ flight attendants. Shortly after breakfast, we began our descent into an appropriately overcast London. And there was even a Finnair plane that we taxied past!

Historically, I’ve tried to avoid transiting Heathrow airport because of the difficulties associated with changing terminals and re-clearing security, but this time I didn’t have a ton of options for how to get to Venice. We’ll see how it goes.

In summary, British Airways is still my favorite business class across the Atlantic. I really do need to fly Virgin Atlantic at some point and test its SFO-LHR flight. This BA lounge is definitely better than the one in DC (4/5). The Club Suite seat is great and definitely one of my favorite business class seats to sleep in (5/5). Dinner was decent, but breakfast was uninspiring, but that was made up for partially by the service (3/5). The service was great! I especially appreciated the proactive offer of fruit when the flight attendant was unimpressed with the breakfast he was serving (5/5). The IFE on this flight was one of the better offerings I’ve had from BA and the Wi-Fi actually worked this time (4/5). Overall, this flight gets a solid 21/25.

I booked this as the return portion of my trip that started in Warsaw, Poland. Prorating the price of flights, I think I paid about $850 for this Club World flight. I earned 13 420 Avios and 140 tier points for this flight as well as around 4 250 Amex points. The total points earned represented a whopping 28% return on spend, which is impressive. No wonder BA is changing to spend-based Avios earning.