Review of British Airways flight from Frankfurt to London in Business

Intro

Well, well, well, so much for Polaris, huh? As I wrote about in a separate post, what was supposed to be a simple trip back to the USA soon turned into a day trip to Scotland. Due to insane summer flight prices, my only option to get from Frankfurt to Edinburgh was connecting through London on British Airways. Hence, this leg will see me flying on an A320 the 407 miles up to London Heathrow (my original hometown).

So, how is the British Airways short haul product? Club Europe is decent for a European Business Class in a couple of different ways. For starters, 90% of the time, when getting on board, you know exactly what to expect: friendly cabin crew, a light snack, and decent-priced wifi. It's obviously just a blocked middle seat, unlike Domestic First Class in the USA, but it works.

Routing

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What was supposed to be a regular flight from Windhoek-Frankfurt-Chicago soon turned into a race to change my ticket during the peak summer travel period. With 1 seat being left on British Airways Avios, an unbelievably helpful United Airlines agent willing to change my flight free of charge, and a potentially cranky me, everyone came together to help me out with this family emergency. My apologies to the agent I snapped at by Z gates, and my praises to the United agent who helped me out. Thank you all around!

Although I only paid 40K miles for the whole trip in Business, I don't think saving an extra 48,000 miles was worth this stress. 

Air Canada Lounge Frankfurt

Due to my ticket in Polaris, I first checked out the Air Canada Lounge (before I knew anything about changing plans) 

If you happen to be flying a Star Alliance carrier out of Frankfurt soon and are already around B gates, I highly recommend checking out the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge. This lounge is one of the best lounges in the Air Canada network with not too many crowds, free wifi, a great selection of food, and a decent drinks selection. 

JAL Sakura Lounge

Before my BA flight, I checked out the JAL Sakura Lounge

The JAL Sakura Lounge in Frankfurt isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Before the pandemic, I had heard quite a few bad reviews about the lounge, but with staff preparing food, real champagne flutes (just without the champagne), and Japanese toilets, this isn’t a bad lounge per se. 

How I Booked

As previously mentioned, as my flight to Chicago was almost in the process of boarding, I was asked to head to Scotland. Booking at 12 pm and having to get to another destination the same day during summer travel in Europe is going to be expensive. With economy tickets upwards of 700$, I was lucky to secure the last seat on BA Avios from Frankfurt-London-Edinburgh for 15,000 Avios and 189 GBP.

BA prices tickets individually when on a connection. Thus, if I had solely booked the Frankfurt leg, it would have been something around 7.5K Avios+110 ish GBP. 

If you would like to read the whole story you can here (I don't link my blog much anymore but this article is funny)

Boarding

Heading out from the JAL Sakura Lounge in Terminal 2, I had around 30 minutes until boarding. For some peculiar reason, I was craving pasta. Thus, when I stumbled across a little restaurant selling a carbonara for 14 Euros, I enjoyed a lovely pasta.

Scoffing down my pasta, it was soon time to board our 11-year-old Airbus A320, taking us over to London Heathrow that day.

Arriving at gate D7, group 4 had already begun boarding. It was a little bit of a mess as we were ushered onto a bus, but 10 minutes later, we arrived at our beautiful A320 in its Oneworld livery.

Stepping onboard, I felt a sense of nostalgia as I heard the "Good afternoon, Sir" in the English accent. Something about the British accent is that it just sounds so much more welcoming and polite. 

The Seat/Cabin

The perk of operating a blocked middle seat business class in Club Europe is that British Airways can pick and choose how many business class seats they want to provide for a flight. For example, this flight had 6 rows of business class, while an upcoming flight of mine to Paris had a whopping 12 rows!

The seats are laid out in a 3-3 configuration, but the middle seat is blocked in Club Europe. Due to a sold-out flight, the only seat left for both of my legs happened to be 1A. Usually, I wouldn't take the bulkhead on a narrowbody as I like to stretch my legs under the seat, but beggars can't be choosers.

Unfortunately, I was the last passenger on board in business class, so I couldn't get any cabin shots. 

Departure

Boarding was wrapped up by 5:20 pm, and 5 minutes later, the captain came on to announce that we would be delayed by about 15 minutes due to congestion at Heathrow. Great… For my next 4 flights, this would be an ongoing trend...

However, we ended up pushing back a couple of our new departure slot to head out on the long taxi to runway 18. Of all the runways at Frankfurt, they really had to give us 18 😒. 

Skipping a third of the runway (presumably since we were so light), we motored off the ground at 6:02 pm, 22 minutes behind schedule.

I have to say that the departure out of Frankfurt is absolutely gorgeous on a sunny day.

A gorgeous departure

Once airborne, we ended up making a right bank out of Frankfurt before heading up past 10,000 feet, directing our bird towards Heathrow. 

IFE/WIFi

Once past 10,000 feet, I logged on to check the cost of the wifi. Unfortunately, unlike most US carriers, which operate an IFE system through personal devices, British Airways does not. However, I was happy to find half-reasonable wifi prices, with messaging costing 1.99 GBP for the whole flight and Wifi coming out at 4.99 GBP for 1 hour or 6.99 GBP for the full flight.

Meal Service

Soon after checking the wifi prices, the lovely flight attendant working my aisle came around to distribute menus for todays short flight. There were two options to choose from, one being prawn, and the other being some sort of vegetarian dish. 

Considering I wasn't too hungry, I decided to snack on some bread and shortbread, as well as a lovely glass of wine. Considering I was going to have some Wagammama in London Heathrow, this was the perfect snack to hold me over. 

Once again (similar to my Windhoek flight), I got into extensive conversation with my seatmate. We must have chatted for an hour and 15 minutes as next thing I knew, we had begun our approach into Heathrow. He had been in Germany to watch the Scotland play in the Euros, but after being knocked out in the groupstages, he booked the first flight back to Glasgow. Lovely guy, we drank, we laughed, and we smiled. The cabin crew kept us topped off, and put up with our shenanigans. 

Arrival

An hour and 20 minutes after takeoff, we had begun our final approach into Heathrow. Now for the most interesting part, we landed from the West today and not the East. I've had this happen a couple of times, but 19/20 times one lands from the East. 

We touched down ahead of schedule (the captain made up some time) at 6:08 pm. Seeing as we were heading the wrong direction (presumably the reason), the flight deck firmly applied the reverse thrusters and brakes to get us off the runway early. 

It's always such a treat landing into Heathrow and spotting some BA A380s, and Virgin Atlantic widebodies. Check out the Aeromexico 787 and Iberia A350 parked up as well! 

I thought to myself, "oh, I am going to have even more time in the lounge to have a few champers after catching up the time in the air". Yeah… no. As we pulled up to A gates, the captain informed us that we would have a 30 minute hold due to a computer system glitch (what I thought originally was congestion). Great… 😒 welcome to summer flying.

At 6:40 pm, we pulled into next to a BA A321. Seeing this bird gave me a quick flashback to the old ex BMI fleet BA used to operate with lie flat seats. Oh how I wish they still had those.

From there on, it was time to clear passport control and head back up through security to get ready to my flight to Edinburgh.