Bottom-line up front
British Airways’ day-time flights eastbound across the Atlantic offer a convenient way to travel to London without “losing a night” to travel in exchange for losing the day instead. If you struggle to sleep on a plane, this type of flight is worth considering. The exit row seats on this aircraft type (787-8) are great for legroom but the proximity to the lavatory can be quite disruptive.
The economy class experience on this flight lacked any standout features (positively or negatively). From this experience, I don’t recommend either seeking out or avoiding British Airways’ economy class.
Full Story:
Back when I booked my spring break trip to Europe, I used a two-for-one voucher to get half-off the Avios required for the roundtrip flight. I had the option to use the voucher for only the one way flight from San Francisco to London, but I decided to book a roundtrip ticket, with a return of January 5th from London to San Francisco. I wasn’t sure if I’d end up using the second half of that ticket, but it was only a $50 cancelation fee if I didn’t use it.
I’ve always thought it would be funny to fly from the East Coast to the West Coast via Europe, and now was the time! On January 1st, just a few hours after New Years, I hopped on the daytime British Airways flight to London from Boston. It was hard to turn down a $300 oneway flight to Europe when I knew I’d be able to come back in Club World.
As one might expect, my outbound trip began at the British Airways lounge at BOS. Although I was flying economy, I had access through my American Airlines Platinum Pro (Oneworld Emerald) status. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but this was the first time that I’d gotten lounge access in the United States from this status (because status doesn’t come with Admirals Club access on domestic itineraries).
We had arrived at the airport a bit later than I’d wanted, but still had plenty of time to check a bag, so it wasn’t too big a deal, but it did mean that we had a very short time in the lounge before the flight (especially after a surprisingly long wait at TSA Pre-Check).
Upon entering the BA lounge at Boston, you’re greeted immediately by the dining area.
This lounge is interesting because it has to open early enough for this flight (and thus serve breakfast) but then there’s a massive gap (6+ hours) before the overnight flights to Europe, so I have to imagine there are some other Oneworld flights that depart the terminal during the gap that justifies the lounge being open until noon most days. The sitting area close to the entrance (and kitchen) is not particularly exciting or well-appointed, but there is a First Class dining area. The Boston flights are short enough that I think having a good first class dining area is important for those who want to maximize rest on the short transatlantic flight.
Deeper into the lounge is a nicer bar area (and even had some holiday decorations at the time):
Unfortunately, we had basically no time to enjoy anything other than the dining area in the lounge because they wanted the plane to board ASAP. And realistically, 7 am is too early for a bar for me anyway.
So instead I got a (sad) British breakfast of beans, toast, “eggs”, and a banana. It was… fine. It was enough to get me going and accept my fate of sitting in “World Traveller” (coach).
Speaking of sitting in coach, the legroom wasn’t too bad in the exit row! It’s kind of wild how huge the exit door is, but that meant that I had literally infinite leg room. I easily could’ve done yoga in the space in front of my row. Maybe I will next time.
The main downside of a seat like this is that it means the tray tables and monitors are in the armrests. Being in the armrest means that they are (a) inherently more awkward to use and (b) the arm rests aren’t moveable, so some of the benefit of the empty middle seat was lost.
Not to worry though, this flight would be pretty short all things considered. They had us board way earlier than was necessary because they wanted us to be ready to go as soon as our slot opened up, which makes sense, but was also pretty silly how early we got on board since it was a pretty light flight all things considered.
The back of the plane wasn’t too full, so most people had some space to spread out.
After sitting around for about a half hour after our scheduled departure time, we finally got moving. I understand that the goal was to get everything ready as soon as possible so we could make our slot, but since the flight wasn’t particularly full, the whole “board asap” seemed pretty unnecessary to me.
There were two choices for the main meal: the “Full English Breakfast” and the vegetarian “egg souffle”. I managed to get pictures of both! I went with the vegetarian option, and the main reason for the choice was that I saw it was being served on actual dishware instead of directly in aluminum, haha. Like the lounge offering, it was… fine. Since it was, again, the only thing available, it sufficed. The muffin was actually pretty good but had a whopping 480 calories, which was insane for a breakfast item.
Then again, because of the time change, breakfast was likely to be my main meal for the day. The meal service finished just under 90 minutes after our push back time. And then as you might expect for a flight in coach, nothing really happened for the next 3.5 hours.
As an aside, this was one of the last flights of this specific 787-8 before it went to Cardiff to get its cabin upgraded to Club Suites, so now it’s got a different Club World cabin than the one I saw (not that it matters since I wasn’t sitting in Club anyway).
And then about 90 min before landing, they came around with the pre-landing light meal. In this case, since it was a daytime flight, the prelanding meal was just a simple empanada. It’s actually noteworthy though in my opinion that a British airline served an empanada, haha. But that seems as reasonable a light meal as any for this type of flight in my opinion.
We had an on-time landing into London, and then we were on our way to customs via the internal train!
In summary, I did survive my first transatlantic economy flight since 2021. The lounge in Boston was just ok (3/5). While I did appreciate the infinite legroom of the exit row, the arm rest restrictions and amount of crowding around the seat wasn’t great (3/5). The meal service was similarly just ok (3/5), and the service was pretty minimal, especially considering the flight wasn’t even super full (3/5). The IFE was also pretty bad compared to what I’d expect on other BA services (2/5). Overall, the flight gets a 14/25, which is not a great opener for 2026, but I would’ve been shocked if an economy class flight (especially on a short transatlantic journey) wow’d me.
I paid $323 for the economy ticket and was able to get both an exit row seat and lounge access from my American Platinum Pro status. I paid using my Amex platinum card and so earned around 1 500 Amex points as well as about 2 600 AA miles, for a return of around 19%, which is pretty good! It’s been interesting alternating flying on British Airways recently as an AA elite instead of a British Airways Gold member. I’m impressed that I can’t really tell much of a difference at least (which is what is supposed to happen with a joint venture partner to be fair).
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