2025’s big trip: India! Part 2: LHR-DUB

Upon arriving in London and clearing security, I made my way directly to the Galleries First Lounge, which has been featured on this blog numerous times before and will likely continue being featured on this blog for a while because it is the Oneworld Emerald lounge for British Airways at Heathrow.  This will be my first time accessing the lounge through my American Airlines Platinum Pro status, rather than through my British Airways Gold Status.

Nothing was different about the entry, and nothing had really changed since las year.  I had a short layover here until my connecting flight onward to Dublin.

Since I had taken the earlier flight from San Francisco, breakfast was still being served when I arrived at the lounge. It changed over to lunch shortly after, with an intermediate transition period where both meal choices were on offer.

Breakfast was the standard Full English Breakfast spread, and lunch was some type of curry and dips spread.

After an hour or so in the lounge, it was time to head to the gate for my connecting flight to Dublin.  Unusually, this flight actually left from a B gate, so I had to head over pretty early for the flight. I got to the gate when boarding had already started, and since no airport is free of gate lice, I struggled to actually get into the line.  I tried to ask someone if they were waiting for priority boarding, and rudely told me that everyone was boarding (so she clearly didn’t understand my question) and then started moving into the actual roped off line.  Well, it was after that point that the priority lane split off, so I just went behind her for two steps and then immediately bypassed her via the priority line.

Not that it really mattered anyway because once I got my spot in the priority line, they stopped scanning boarding cards because they were still waiting for the flight crew apparently.

So, we stood there for at least 20 minutes before the line started moving again.  And then once we got on the plane, we had to wait some more, so by the time we pushed back, we were about 40 minutes late, which then translated to a 30-minute overall delay (for an hour long flight).

Though I did get the last laugh at least when the rude lady walked onto the plane, and I was already there, and she had to walk past me.  Anyway, it’s not like European Business Class is anything to get too excited about.  For this hour long flight, I had just an economy class seat with a tray table in the middle.  Don’t get me wrong though, the tray table in the middle is actually extremely useful for putting a drink or a book there.  The extra distance from the person in the window seat is also great (and the bulkhead has proper legroom as well).  The best part about EuroBusiness once you’re in the air is the meal.  British Airways is not necessarily known for offering the best meals in the sky, but I actually find their best meals to be the ones on these short flights. 

WiFi was available on this short flight for £1.89 (streaming) or £0.59 (messaging).I love how BA adjusts the price of WiFi and messaging pretty aggressively with flight length.  A microtransaction of 59p is kind of funny to see, but it means that the system actually understands that this a very short flight (messaging was still free for BA Club members).

They don’t have the time to heat anything up, so for your meal, you just get a cold plate, but this salad-like dish was excellent.  The main flavor profile was “tangy”.  And everything served was something that made sense to be served cold.  I would rather have this smaller cold meal than some of the oily hot meals I’ve gotten before on longer routes within Europe.

British Airways remains my favorite airline to fly for short flights like these.  For a flight of under 90 minutes (translating to less than two total hours on the plane), I don’t necessarily need a wider seat, just more shoulder space, and a blocked middle seat delivers that nicely.

In summary, I really enjoy short flights like this one on British Airways.  Having access to the Galleries First lounge before such a short flight is a great perk (5/5).  The bulkhead seat is great for a short flight like this one (5/5).  The meal on-board was similarly excellent (5/5), and the service was great as well (4/5).  The only IFE on board was WiFi, but with free messaging and an option for streaming, that’s pretty good for a flight within Europe (4/5).  Overall, the flight gets a solid 23/25.

This flight was paid for as part of the overall ticket from San Francisco to London to Dublin.  This flight earned me 414 AA miles/Loyalty.  That means that this flight was credited through as costing about $46 + taxes and fees (so probably about $70-80 total to give me around 350 Amex points).  That’s really not a bad price for an hour-long EuroBusiness flight.  This flight marks the end of my ticket that I had booked from Dublin to SF and back.  The next Europe flights will be on a separate ticket.