To Heathrow and Terminal 3 with National Express
New Aircraft, Old Friends
Well, let’s get this trip on the road. If I can remember where my passport is. Now, where did I place that thing…
In this Trip Report:
- Well, this year has been a pile of toilet so far
- Take the National Express, when your life is a mess, it will make you smile
- Heathrow Terminal 3 Lounges
- AA087 London Heathrow to Chicago O’Hare – Main Cabin Extra
- Into the USA
- HOTEL: Holiday Inn Rosemont
- HOTEL Hyatt Regency O’Hare
- Airplane Art Extra from the Hyatt Regency O’Hare
- Playing with the Apple iPhone 17 Pro Camera around Chicago
- Back to O’Hare Terminal 3
- American Airlines Flagship Lounge
- BA296 Chicago O’Hare to London Heathrow, World Traveller Plus
- Buses and Buses
- The way old friends do
Take the National Express, when your life is a mess, it will make you smile.
And the crowd goes dah dah dah dah dah dah…
I tried to be clever this trip and organise myself. That’s a lie… because the day before, I had moved my passport to a safe place. So safe a place, I was hunting like a madperson until 30 minutes before leaving the flat for it.
I do like to torture myself sometimes.
Sadly, most of my planned pre-departure sleep went up in smoke, as I played that wonderful game of “where the hell has my passport gone?”
With everything packed to go, I grabbed my suitcase, skibag of trash and the backpack, and headed to an Uber to get me to the south side of the city…. Digbeth.
After being dropped off, it was time to enter the Big Brother house and find my coach.
Welcome to Digbeth. You’ll want to leave!
The one advantage of National Express over FlixBus is that National Express use an actual station, whereas FlixBus uses a bus stand on the edge of the city. This is fine when it’s quiet (such as 3 am in the morning), but I’ve been past when there have been four coaches stacking up at a bus stop, adding to the local traffic.
It’s getting to the point where Flix is going to have to do something about this, as a simple bus shelter isn’t cutting it for travellers.
Empty
My ticket was scanned, and all my bags were accepted for travel.
210 to the southern airports.
With that, I toddled aboard to find a spot that didn’t disagree with me – because I’m sure not paying £2.50 a leg to reserve a seat at the front of the coach.
That’ll do.
And not too far from the front.
Our journey to Heathrow is a simple one – fight the local roads out of Birmingham to Birmingham Airport, then the M42, M40, M25 and M4 to Heathrow Central Bus Station.
I’m sometimes asked why I don’t drive this – it’s a simple 100 or so mile drive. Various reasons – 1) I’ve worked the day before on minimal sleep, which puts me a risk behind the wheel at night. 2) Parking at Heathrow is still one of the biggest costs going, with 7 days of parking coming to the best part of £200.
Considering the coach will drop me off for £50, with some chump change for Uber rides to and from the flat, this is an easy no-brainer. Make things easy and less stressful.
As to why I don’t travel the night before, the hotel cost is scary (sadly, the good value ones have long gone at Heatorow), and besides, I’m normally not ready to go. The joy of packing to the last minute sometimes.
Especially if some previous incarnation of yourself decided to move an important document to another room.
The trip to Heathrow wasn’t a bad one per se (once the coach left Birmingham Airport and the driver found a route to the M42), it was as smooth as the coach normally is, especially with a spare seat next to me for the journey south, with just the usual bumps and slowdowns at junctions.
At around 4:20 in the morning, the coach pulled into Heathrow Central coach station. Whilst the station was quiet at that time of the morning, the driver chose the furthest stand from the entrance.
Wonderful.
After pulling in at the farthest stand, I dragged my luggage to the trolleys and to the lifts, under the road complex of Heathrow.
To the terminals.
Even the Tube is shut at 4:20 am in the morning.
The Great Push to Terminal 3
Heading inside the complex, the first thing I wanted to do was… get coffee. With check-in not due to open till 5:30 am, I needed to stay awake until then. Sadly, at 4:30 in the morning, no coffee shops were open. I therefore cursed and paid £2.60 for a bottle of Cola.
No, I wasn’t happy about that either.
I headed outside to drink my cola after doing a little bit of re-packing, as I was running more than a little warm. For context, a few weeks before, I came down with a serious bug, with my body still trying to recover.
The pinkish glow of Terminal 3
With the cola mostly down my throat, I eyed the check-in queue, which seemed to be moving. I headed in to face the queue. 
The Flagship First queue had gone, whilst there was a short wait for the Business/Premium Economy/Middling Frequent Flyers queue to be opened.
This never changes, sadly. And yes, I need to do something about this when I go for my next elite qualification – be it Star or SkyTeam. Well, it won’t be oneworld and BA’s stupid £7,500 or £20,000 spend requirement.
Thankfully, the queue moved quickly enough, so I was processed quickly enough. With boarding passes and luggage receipts in hand, I headed up to Security and towards Fast Track security.
In terms of security, it was… for want of a better term… walk-through speed, with the only standing time to wait for my bags to go through the scanner.
With nothing causing the bags to be stopped, I proceeded into the main waiting area. There were two things on my agenda – some gifts for my friends and new earbuds (as I had left mine at home).
Not a meal deal, and certainly not at £6 a pop.
Gifts were easy enough – I got some tea from Duty Free (it’s a force of habit – and a lot easier than adding another caddy to the suitcase). Earbuds were a little more of a pain – I got some JLabs ANC earbuds… however, my credit card got declined.
Odd.
I thought nothing more of that, not knowing that was going to bite me in the ass hard later.
With my donations to Heathrow shopping complete, I headed over to the lounge complex.
Although with the LCD panel breaking, maybe Heathrow needs to look into a replacement. Ignore your correspondent in the reflection.
Momma needed noodles.
To the lounges
Next:
You should know which lounges I went to… right?
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