The Road to Nowhere at 2:45 in the morning, the joy of check-in… and equipment changes
Surprise, Surprise!
Early morning starts are never fun – and anyone else who thinks that fighting to get around Digbeth Coach station around 2:35 must be having a giggle. But we’re about to also have the first surprise this trip.
And a rather unwelcome one at that.
In this surprise-laden adventure…
- We all know the drill by now… don’t we?
- The early morning road to nowhere (and Heathrow Terminal 3 first thing in the morning, with an equipment change shock)
- Morning Lounging at the Cathay Pacific and American Airlines Lounges
- AA87 London Heathrow to Chicago O’Hare – Main Cabin Extra
- Into the USA and The Crowne Plaza O’Hare
- Hyatt Regency O’Hare
- Airplane Art Special from the Hyatt Regency O’Hare
- Various nibbles around Chicago
- An Instagram Trap? Coffee at Brü
- Chicago Classics: Giordano’s Deep Dish Pizza
- Enjoying a Chicago River tour… in the rain
- Back to O’Hare and the British Airways lounge
- BA296 Chicago O’Hare to London Heathrow – Club World (Club Suites)
- Racing across Heathrow… but where’s the coach?
- To onward surprises
What’s the term The Talking Heads would use? “Well, we know where we’re going. But we don’t know where we’ve been”
Sorry. I enjoy songs about having an existential crisis within an existential crisis. It has a lot of symmetry, especially at 2:15 in the morning.
That does not get old, sadly.
As usual, I’m struggling to get out of the flat in time, mainly because I leave my final packing to the last minute, working out what I’ve forgotten.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten something – I guess I’ll find out down-route.
That and the packing that I did for this trip over days was compressed into a few hours. That’s gotta spell some sort of disaster ahead.
We’ll be taking questions on this later – as well as the state of the handle on one of these pieces of luggage.
Once in the Uber, it was time for a tour of Birmingham at night, with the driver taking a route to the Coach station.
Arriving at Digbeth, it was time to roll the luggage around as they still hadn’t worked out how to open doors at night. That and it’s still a tip, thanks to the work getting the Midland Metro extension installed.
Entering Digbeth, the 210 was just about to start loading. Like the rest of the world, I queued up to board.
With my baggage accepted, I was let aboard the coach.
Coach 210 Birmingham Digbeth to London Heathrow Terminal 5
National Express
If you’re new to the blog, National Express is a coach operator that does the one thing that I handle when travelling – early morning starts, with coaches that run 24 hours on the main trunk and airport routes.
The seat pitch is passable, with leather-like seats installed, with a recline and a seatbelt (as wearing one whilst travelling on a coach is the law in the United Kingdom – coach crashes made sure of that). There was also USB Power at the seat, making the journey go a little faster for me.
This coach would work through the back streets of Digbeth, then head out to Birmingham Airport, then head for the Heathrow Airport complex.
This is fine in theory. In practice, the coach had a diversion to the outskirts of Coventry, as the M42 was closed between the airport and the M40 junction – thus it was time for an A-route diversion. In the past, National Express used to send their coaches to Coventry and Warwick Parkway to pick up/drop off passengers – thus it isn’t too much of a time loss compared to heading straight down the M42/M40.
Birmingham Airport at night.
Also, not going into Coventry City Centre to make a stop is no bad thing.
I took the time to sit back and try and doze – of course, with the adrenaline rushing through me, that wasn’t going to happen.
I watched random YouTube and listened to music… because otherwise there’s not much to do on the ride down to the west of London, as the M40 isn’t the most interesting motorway in the world.
And the less said about the M25 – the better.
Soon enough – well, nearly three hours later, the coach pulled off the M4 and entered the tunnel under Heathrow’s North runway as we approached the Central Terminal Area.
With the Central Bus Station being my stop, I gathered the laptop and headed off the coach to grab the ski bag and suitcase – both getting worse for wear after various trips across the pond. I suspect one of these (if not both) might be up for retirement after this trip.
..You’ll never leave… or is that Royston Vasey?
RGB Clock gonna RGB.
I found a spare trolley and loaded it up. It was time for the great push across under Heathrow Airport – always fun at 5:10 in the morning.
The great push begins
Symmetry.
That’s… not good.
Towards T3
I popped up exactly where I wanted to be – underneath the pink/purple hue of Terminal 3.
Pink… or is it purple Departures?
Now, there’s a feature at Terminal 3 that I think is a great idea – a baggage repack area. Doesn’t sound important, does it? It has tables to repack items into (or unpack in my case – I fished {“my Pan Am messenger bag out of the suitcase).
There’s also a free-use calibrated scale there too – so if you’re having trouble fitting stuff in your luggage requirement, you can repack and pray to the luggage gods that you’re under-weight.
Although you do have to kick some tourists off the scales to use the damn thing.
Or dispose of items. Or put them in your hand luggage. Then pray again.
With my travel outfit sorted, I headed to the American Airlines check-in queue.
Sadly, AA was having more than a few problem passengers that morning (as well as technical problems – with only one desk open and the other with an agent looking forlornly at their terminal), so a queue that was 10 deep when I arrived grew quickly. In addition, the two staff that were assigned to First and Premium did not accept any passengers from the business class queue.
Sigh. I know it’s protecting the product so that Elites have access to the quickest queues, but if passengers aren’t moving through the queue promptly, shouldn’t you open up the queues to all?
What should have been a 10-minute drop my bags and go, turned into a 40-minute wait.
Delicious.
I took the time to double-check the seat map – and then it hit me – AA had struck twice this day, with the airline shifting me from a window seat with a bulkhead for me to sleep against on a 787-9… to an aisle seat in the middle section of a Boeing 787-8.
Oh crap.
It would appear that the 787-9 that was due to operate the flight to Chicago had been swapped, with very late notice.
This was more than marginally annoying. It was a downright pain as my chances of sleep across the pond had shrunk massively.
Eventually, I made it to the check-in counter, with a third member of staff opening a desk to process passengers. With the bags accepted, and my seat confirmed (with no other window seats available), I was hoping the middle would at least be free (as indicated on the seat map).
We all know where this is going, but I’ll save it for later for your amusement.
With that, it was time to head up to security. T3 used to have escalators at each check-in zone. Sadly, they seem to be ripping these up for lifts as the airport installs its new scanners (and running late on that too).
Well, that’s a lot less fun.
I found a lift and made my way over to Fast Track security.
This way…
Go on. Work for it.
Fast Track was its usual speedy self – and it sped up a lot more thanks to the deployment of CT-Style scanners in Terminal 3. Not having to do the pack-and-unpack dance is a wonderful thing, as well as being through the process in under five minutes.
This popped me out past the main duty-free shop and to the side of the main passenger waiting area.
I was after two things at this point – a bottle of water (because with the upcoming flight, hydration would be a thing and refillable bottles are normally forgotten in my world) as well as a bottle of whiskey for a friend (birthday presents are good things occasionally).
Gift time.
With both items obtained, I was in the mood for noodles. Where can one get noodles in Heathrow Terminal 3?
Let’s go lounging.
If you’ve been here for all of a few writeups, you know where I’m heading…
Next:
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