It’s a long time since we’ve flown short haul with British Airways in economy and having checked in and chosen our seats 24 hours beforehand, we arrived at Heathrow Terminal 3, in good time for our flight to Sofia.
As the school holidays had just finished, it was relatively quiet, and we were soon negotiating the self-service check-in process. It was pretty straightforward and after we’d scanned the boarding passes from our phone, the instructions showed us how to tag our bags. It was a little disconcerting having to press the button to send our cases off into the ether, or hopefully Bulgaria.
Security was similarly straightforward and having no business class lounge to retreat to, we found ourselves in The Evergreen Bar and Kitchen with an extortionately priced bottle of prosecco and a smoked salmon platter, four thin slices of a delicious rye bread and a reasonable portion of fish. I justified the cost as (a) I’d resisted travelling business class which was twice the price (b) we’d not paid to select seats in advance and (c) we’d travelled free to Heathrow using our Over 60s Oyster Card.
Unfortunately our flight at 3.20pm was delayed to the rather precise time of 3.49pm. The delays kept changing by the minute, but we eventually boarded with the captain announcing the good news that everyone was on board by 4pm, but unfortunately due to ‘weather’, we’d have to sit and wait for up to an hour for a tug! We assume he meant inclement weather as it was raining, but not that heavily.
We were sat across the aisle from each other half way down the plane in row 20 and eventually took off just over two hours late. We were served complimentary corn snacks and bottled water before offerings from the High Life Café trolley where a can of Pinot Grigio and a packet of crisps each, cost £18.
We landed at 10.15pm two hours late and arrived at our hotel, in need of a G&T only to find it didn’t have a bar. Not the best start to our holiday.
Having waited until 24 hours before the return flight to both check in and select our seats, I discovered I could have chosen them seven days before the flight. However, we got the same seats as on the outbound leg, just two rows behind.
We were not looking forward to the flight which was due to take off at 9pm, but after a slick check in, we only had time for a quick drink and a mooch in duty free, before boarding commenced. We then actually set off ahead of time, and landed in Heathrow 15 minutes early.
