Heathrow Terminal 5 and The British Airways Galleries South
Widebodies and Short Routes
- Let’s do a challenge
- Off to Heathrow
- Points to be Made vs Economy Class and Beyond – Two idiots race across Heathrow
- Heathrow Terminal 5 and The British Airways Galleries South Lounge
- IB3167 London Heathrow to Madrid (BUSINESS CLASS)
- Crowne Plaza Madrid Airport
- Exploring a bit of Madrid
- Back to Barajas and the Iberia Lounges
- BA461 Madrid to London Heathrow (BUSINESS CLASS/BA FIRST)
- To the trains!
- Two sides of the IAG coin
Off into Terminal 5
Yes, I had checked in successfully (whilst Tim has a few issues), but I have an affinity for paper boarding passes still.
Call it old fashioned… I just love a proper boarding pass – it adds to the occasion (especially if you’re flying business class)
To the fast track!
With both of us with boarding passes, it was time to clear South Security using the FastTrack lanes. That process was done in a matter of minutes – which always helps.
Time to get the crap back together. Also STACK YOUR TRAYS.
Now we come to the part of the trip where I get fleeced. On the way out of the flat – I did unsurprisingly forget something… this time it was external storage (and that’s another big subject and write-up for another day).
With the video we shot – my hard disk would be creaking at the end of the trip (and it’s not a good thing when I’m having to constantly pair back image collections I work with to squeeze more content on the hard disk).
Nonetheless, I grumbled and paid £44.99 for a 1Tb hard disk. Unsurprisingly at the end of the trip, a good 150gb being used … whilst my laptop disk was… suffering on single Gigabyte numbers.
Sometimes, you’ve got to pucker up and pay… like it or not.
With storage in hand, Tim and I chose our lounge of the day – and for comfort and convenience purposes we chose Galleries South.
Why? It’s a bit less busy than Galleries North normally.
The broken cloud art thing.
Letters and Speedmarque make a statement.
That, and it has a horse lamp. Which we like at this blog.
Yes, friends, it’s time to meet our old travel friend, HorseLamp… which has gone from a look of disgust like used to, to a look of gurning….
I don’t know what the T5 staff have been feeding horse-lamp (Avios I suspect), but it seems to be working.
British Airways Galleries South
We were both welcomed into the lounge and headed to find a space with 1) Power and 2) seats – least of all all the cameras took a hit with the amount of work shot. Combined with Adobe Lightroom sucking up every amp of power out of my battery – it wasn’t a nicety, it was a requirement.
Good to see more USB Ports here, as well as main sockets for most systems
Also this inductive charging pad, that converts into a multi-tap output. Very interesting
I got up to explore the food selection – hoping for something a little different to normal. And I’m happy to report the food is slowly improving at the BA Lounge.
Hot items
Soup options
Salad options
And that says a lot considering how… mediocre it used to be.
Hot items included a vegetable curry, Chilli with meatballs, and a Sticky Ginger Chicken, with pasta, rice and others
Even when we arrived, there was an afternoon tea offering of scones – later replaced with a ploughman’s as the evening progressed.
Afternoon tea sandwiches
Scones
Evening Ploughmans
Are we seeing some of that promised Business class investment trickle down at long last? Maybe.
Internet speeds were forgettable sadly, which made some work difficult (although I managed to knock out a post for the blog – so not totally bad). And yes – Tim and I took our time in the lounge. Why? Because we wanted to enjoy travelling as opposed to rushing from A to B like we normally seem to when travelling.
Sometimes – we all need to slow down when it comes to travel and enjoy the moment.
Seating and Bar options
Those moments don’t last forever – so sitting back, chatting with friends, watching the video we shot and making a timeline is a good use of time in my book.
In order to celebrate Tim’s win, I asked for some bubbly – which was received.
And it didn’t taste too bad either.
With the sun setting and our departure time drawing closer – we both headed out of the lounge. Only our flight had gone from boarding to closing.
Time to put a hurry on!
We made haste to T5C on the shuttle (and I taught Tim an important thing about Terminal 5 – use the elevators in every case – it’s quicker that using escalators).
Zoooooom!
Popping out at T5C, we headed to the gate (but to stop to take a picture of an A380 first… gotta take a picture of the whale whilst you can).
That done, we headed to the Madrid plane gate – where the gate area was empty. The admitted they started boarding early to get everyone onboard… as it was a low load that night.
The waiting Airbus A340-600
Grr
Our boarding passes were beeped, and we were cleared to board our flight to Madrid.
Off we go!
Next: IB3167 London Heathrow to Madrid… in Business Class!
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