Thanksgiving 2023 EuroTrip: Part 2 EuroBiz (LHR-VCE)

At the end of the last post, I was just about to start my connection in London. And you know, what? I had probably the smoothest connection in Heathrow I’ve ever had. I got off the plane, walked directly to transfers, scanned my boarding pass, and then cleared security. It worked exactly how it was supposed to. There were plenty of Americans around who really didn’t know what was going on, which is standard at Heathrow.

I spent a brief amount of time in the Galleries First lounge, but since I was out of practice with Heathrow and had carry-on bags, I went my gate way too early and ended up mostly just standing around with no place to sit. Which is classic Heathrow.

My flight this evening was on an A321neo. Normally, newer aircraft are a good thing because the cabins are updated, and they’re generally quieter. However, on BA, specifically, their A320neo family aircraft don’t have the center table in Club Europe. It’s not like the table is vital or anything, but that center table really makes a lot of difference in my opinion in terms of the cabin vibe. Without it, it just looks like no one is sitting beside me because I got lucky, which is the same vibe one gets on Finnair as per standard.

The best I could do to replicate the vibe of having that center table is to flip out the middle seat’s table as a drink rest. It was interesting being on this flight; since it was the low tourist season, I figured most of the people on the flight were just going London to Venice. I don’t know if that’s true though; I wonder how many people had come off a connection like I had.

As is standard in Europe, there was no pre-departure beverage, but after takeoff, I selected a Coke Zero. They forgot to give me my pre-packaged bag of nuts (but remembered to give it to the person in 1F), so I had to ask for it.

After the drinks service, they came around with the food options. I selected the vegetarian curry (again). The other options included a salad with chicken (which seems pretty standard on their flights) and a pasta dish. The curry was served with an interesting take on a roasted tomato hummus, as well as a bread roll and a Do&Co chocolate mousse dessert.

I spent a lot of the flight reading the most recent Hunger Games novel, and the person sitting in 1F made some conversation with me about it. It turns out she was a librarian and traveling home with her family, who were sitting in 1A/1C. 

In summary, compared to the seat, food, and service on the previous flight, this flight was pretty lackluster. Though that’s not surprising for a generic European Business Class flight. The Galleries First lounge is always a decent lounge, but I didn’t get to spend much time in it because of the Heathrow ground situation, which really detracts from the “premium experience” (3/5). The Club Europe seat was standard, but the bonus point for a bulkhead seat was lost due to the lack of a middle table (3/5). The food on this flight was not very good and didn’t really go well together (2/5). And unlike the previous flight, the service wasn’t good enough to make up for it (3/5). The one positive about the neos is that they have in-flight WiFi and power ports at least (2/5). overall, this flight gets a lackluster 13/25. Not BA’s best showing in my opinion.

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 $200 for this Club World flight. I earned 1 740 Avios and 40 tier points for this flight as well as around 1 000 Amex points. The total points earned represented about a 16% return on spend, which is alright.