TRIP REPORT: Exploring Passenger Innovation in a rush – British Airways North or South Lounge?

North or South? Exploring both of the British Airways Club Lounges
Exploring the latest in passenger experience… in a rush.

• Planning is Overrated. Other People’s Plans, Doubly So
• Flixing over to London and the joy of the Elizabeth Line
• British Airways North and South lounges
• BA974 London Heathrow to Hamburg Airport (Club Europe)
• Into Hamburg, The IBIS Budget, Hamburg St Pauli/Repherbahn
• When technology goes wrong…
• Stuff you might have missed from AIX 2024
• Back to Hamburg Airport and the Hamburg Airport lounge
• BA967 Hamburg Airport to London Heathrow (Club Europe)
• To the Late-Night Coach
• Desk Rabbit Life

For those on Business Class tickets, hold British Airways Silver or above, or oneworld Saphire and above, there are three lounges you can access at Heathrow Terminal 5 without paying any more.  They are:

• Galleries North in T5A
• Galleries South in T5A
• Galleries in T5B

If you’re BA Gold or travelling First Class, you have other lounge options, including the Galleries First Lounge and The Concorde Room on the South side of the Terminal. And if you’re paying… well, enjoy. At least there are pay lounges in Terminal 5 (with Plaza Premium and Club Aspire).

We’ll start at Galleries North. This is near the North Fast Track Security Exit. The beauty of this is you can stumble from the security gates and into the lounge.

Heading into the lounge, there has been some work down with newer furniture installed, with options for seating along the side of the lounge, as well as near the food area and an “outdoor” veranda area.

That’s wonderful. But not a lot else.

As usual, finding a spot in this lounge is a challenge, so I ended up on a high stool with a glass bar that has seen… better days.

The breakfast offering was out when I arrived, so I went to inspect and graze.

Hot items

It’s the typical breakfast, with sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs, tomatoes and mushrooms. There were some cold cuts too, as well as more fruit-based items

Going around the back, there was bread and porridge.

A standard breakfast, but one I happily snacked on to help wake me up.

I also partook of some alcohol. Because pink bubbles are never a bad option.

Although I was reaching for other drinks later – and yes. Mainly non-alcoholic drinks until I got on the plane.

Outside, I was on the wrong side of anything, as departures were being handled on the south runway, with most of the arrivals taxing off the runway way before Terminal 5A.

The most interesting thing I saw was a British Airway A321neo heading to Hamburg .. with a brand-new interior fitted

So close, yet so far.

One of the things you’ll notice with the Club lounges is that they are busy, with a high turnover of people coming and going. That’s good because the use of the North lounge was nearing capacity most of the time.

One of the big problems at Heathrow is of course the game they love to play with leaving until the last minute to announce gates. This can impact lounge time and where to position yourself – do you choose the North Lounge, the South Lounge or T5B if your flight is going from there?

You are playing guesswork most of the time sadly.

Heading over to the South Lounge, the Club Lounge is two levels up from the departure gates (compared to being on the same level as security – as Heathrow wants you to walk around and spend money on the way).

Although they need more signs like this before you go to the lounge. 

Horselamp: Oh. What are you doing back here? Aren’t you a Ruby yet so I don’t have to see your face? If not, why not? 

Sadly, this lounge suffers a lot – as it is nearly full any time of the day when you travel. It took a good couple of loops of the lounge to find a seat to get comfortable in – and even then, a couple pulled up to share a table with me.

This is part of the problem of Terminal 5 lounges – unless you’re in at the very beginning or end of the day, these lounges are at the point where they are heavily oversubscribed for Club, Elite and Business Class passengers, leading to a pretty poor experience. And there’s no easy way around this, other than to either cut the amount of people using the lounge or increase lounge capacity.

I dread to think which way BA could go, other than to “leave it and hope people get hungry in the terminal”.

Food was a bit of a letdown compared to breakfast, with some flavours that didn’t agree with me. I guess I liked the simpler taste of breakfast.

Drinks were well stocked from the usual bars.

The Hamburg flight unsurprisingly started to show a delay. At this point, I consider it “average” for a short-haul BA flight not to be on time.

Eventually, the sign changed from “delayed” to “go to gate”.

Given that the lounge was heading for a dead loss, I headed out and down to the masses in the terminal.

A9 is more on the left-hand of the terminal – meaning my gamble to go to the South Terminal was another bust in the making. At least I got a little airport cardio in.

Arriving at A9, the gate was unsurprisingly packed with passengers, with most of them looking “pre-tradeshow” happy… but the other passengers seemed unable to understand what a boarding order is.

Thankfully, the staff controlled the boarding process, with its 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 onward process used.

I made my way through the queue and had my boarding pass beeped. With that done, it was time to enjoy an alise seat to Hamburg.

Next: BA974 to Hamburg – Can the crew make row 10 before the top of decent?

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