So all in all it's been a bit fraught the last few days!
Thankfully I'm now sat comfortably in a BA 777 somewhere over the Atlantic on my way to New York. In fact I'm sat more comfortably than I expected having been upgraded from World Traveller Plus to Club World!
The journey down to Heathrow (via Guildford) was very straightforward. We were parked up at 7.45am having seen no signs of people on strike. Terminal 5 seemed very similar to how it was when I was there the previous August. The one noticeable difference was the number of BA and BAA staff about and several big school groups off on trips to far flung corners of the globe.
Because of the strike I wasn't able to drop my luggage off until 2 hours before the scheduled departure time (normally it's 3 hours). Cliff and I sat and had a coffee in Cafe Nero, and once Cliff left I had about half an hour to wait.
Bang on the dot of 9am I dropped off my bag and then was through security very quickly. Once airside it did seem a bit quieter, than last year despite the hordes of school groups.
I grabbed some food from Pret and then took the train to T5B, where my flight was due to depart from.
I found my gate and was pleased to see a 777 parked at it – surely nothing could go wrong now?
Well as 11am approached it became clear that things were not quite going to plan! An announcement was made that said that there would be a delay because of the “increased time taking to brief the crews”. At this point I had visions that this was a smokescreen and in fact no crew would turn up, the flight would be cancelled, and I would be spending my holiday in Hounslow!
Thankfully my 'worst case scenario' didn't have time to get fully formed in my mind before the flight crew and cabin crew came striding through the terminal and got on the plane.
Eventually boarding was started and we had to put up with the pantomime 'secondary security' check because we were flying to the US. This involved everybody's hand luggage being hand search and then a quick pat down. Very slow and frustrating.
However, things were about to take a turn for the better! My boarding pass was scanned by the gate agent and instead of the light going green it went red and there was ding sound. My original boarding pass was torn up and a new one was printed with the seat number 10K – Club World here we come!
OK so because of the strike action we get a 'simplified service' instead of the full Club World experience, but who cares? Just the seat, privacy and space will do me! We had a cold meal which consisted of a slice of quiche and a chicken salad with a slice of cheesecake for pudding. The chicken was bit rubbery, but otherwise it was streets ahead of the food I would've had in World Traveller Plus.
