British Airways BA772 London Heathrow to Zurich Airport, EuroTraveller (Economy Class)
Older. Yes, Wiser? No.
- Age is a social construct. Frequent flyer programmes, doubly so.
- Morning coaches. Coach Fun and comedies
- British Airways Galleries North Lounge, Heathrow Terminal 5
- BA772 London Heathrow to Zurich (Eurotraveller)
- Into Zurich
- Experiments in photography: The Canon EOS R50
- Back to Zurich Airport and a dreaded Text message
- IC3 Zurich Airport to Basel Hbf
- To EuroAirport Basel and The Queue from Hades
- The Skyview Lounge, EuroAirport Basel
- BA749 Euroairport Basel to London Heathrow (EuroTraveller)
- Little Britain at its worst
- Older yes. Wiser? Dear deity… of course not!
BA772 London Heathrow to Zurich Airport.
Heading down the escalator, it was time to go down one of those long, but infinite feeling jetbridge that Heathrow Terminal 5 has.
Down we go.
These feel like they get longer each time
Entrance
BA772 London Heathrow Airpot to Zurich Airport
British Airways Airbus A320 (Gatwick Configuration)
13F, Eurotraveller (Economy Class)
429 miles flown, £32.99 “Revenue” spent, 264 Avios earned.
I was welcomed aboard the A320 – noticing that British Airways have reconfigured their A320s into a much more “low cost” configuration (akin to how Aer Lingus has had their places), with a curtained galley against door 1 Right, whilst the partition has been deleted between Row 1 and the door – this is to create more room, but at the expense of peoples feet being trodden and rolled on who are in row 1.
Wow. So premium.
Club Europe.
I headed down the plane, past Club Europe (which is not worth the upsell of £130 to £160 per segment in this case), and to the second emergency exit row on this Airbus A320.
EuroTraveller
I placed my bag in the overhead bin and settled in. Thankfully on this Airbus A320, there’s a lot of room in the exit row – especially in the 2nd row, where no one can recline the seat behind you.
It got even better, as the middle seat would be free for this flight.
The legroom wasn’t too bad, either.
Meanwhile, the rest of the cabin filled out step by step. Whilst the plane wasn’t full, it was full enough that there was just enough space for all the wheely bags.
That suited me.
During boarding, we were asked not to consume nuts, as a passenger aboard had a nut allergy. That’s a good thing to announce about -0 especially as it is in the air, nuts are a popular snack, and being stuck in a metal tube with possible exposure to nuts is not a good thing.
Well, that’s a pretty awful auto-focus on a phone…
With the doors closed, There was a short delay – 30 minutes or so before our aircraft headed to the taxiway.
For Heathrow Terminal 5, that’s practically on time.
Fine. Manual Focus on this EOS R50 is a thing. Shame it isn’t in the default Apple Photos app (and no, I forgot I had a few other Camera apps on my phone).
The aircraft crossed both the taxiways, heading to one of the mid-points of the runway, where it turned and the engines spooled up for take off.
Grey.
With the aircraft in flight, I turned my attention to connectivity matters. Well, I did once I had a quick doze. There’s something about the whine in an aircraft engine that induces sleep quickly.
And besides, there were some nice views to wake up to.
I did a little scouting around, as there were oddly no power outlets or when I looked – no wifi. That’s unusual for BA’s short haul. Later on, I discovered that someone had added an aircraft on a lease – with the operating aircraft – G-GATH having quite the history, opening with TACA (of El Salvador), GoAir (of India), Mandala (of Indonesia), Onur Air (of Turkey) and finally leased by GECAS to British Airways.
Thus, it seems it isn’t a candidate for Wi-Fi or Power-in-seat. However, they fitted the entire cabin with Colins Aerospace Pinnacle seats.
Sigh. Lack of power.
I’ve given up trying to pry open the mind of British Airways accountants – it isn’t worth the time or effort.
However, one place where the accountants were stopped cold, seems to be with the inflight catering. It seems that the airline learned something during the pandemic, and has kept a minimal included service of ambient items.
On the outbound segment, we were offered a breakfast bar and a bottle of water (250ml).
For a 1 hour 40 segment? Perfect. I’m not moaning about this at all. For those who felt like they needed more, there was a full buy-on-board service being offered by the onboard crew, which seemed to do reasonably well as far as I could see.
I wasn’t that hungry, thanks to breakfast earlier that morning.
I drifted in and out of sleep, but in the end, my body pushed me back to being awake, with a lot of cloud cover as we approached Switzerland,.
Mountains started poking through the sky.
With 15 minutes to go, we were advised that we would be descending – which cues the last runs for the toilets for people and the catering clean-up.
The dance of landing never gets old… and unless I need it, I’d prefer a toilet on the ground. Fewer queues normally.
Meanwhile, Switzerland was greeting us as the aircraft lined up for arrival, as the Airbus A320 descended through the cloud layers.
The descent was a little bumpy, but our A320 made light work of the descent, touching down safely at Zurich Airport.
With the aircraft on the ground, I was expecting a long taxi – but instead, the aircraft took a right at the E Dock and taxied alongside it, indicating there would be hike on arrival.
United Airlines Boeing 767s
Delta And Air Canada parked up.
Eventually, it arrived at one of the edges of E Dock and turned for the gate.
With the engines powered down, it was time to make my way to the exit
I thanked the crew and headed off to a part of Zuirch Airport I’d never been to before.
Overall
Not a bad performance by British Airways. We arrived pretty much on time (even if our departure was a bit late), and there was a drink and a snack offered, on top of any other offerings. Combined with an empty seat, it felt very much like Club Europe – without the antimacassar and a hot breakfast.
It would have been nice to have onboard connectivity, as well as the ability to charge my phone, but there’s nothing that having a power bank to hand can’t fix.
Not a bad performance.
Next:
It’s time to navigate Zurich Airport and try and get out of the place.
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Excellent summary, great capture of the salient details without excess. I enjoyed this very much