Welcome to this, the first of a series of flights from Sept/Oct 2016 that will take me from Manchester, UK to Delhi, Jodhur and Kulu in India on a combined business and leisure trip. The first and final couple of flights were taken with British Airways, while the internal Indian flights were with Air India. Here is the full list of flights:
- MAN-LHR BA1403 - this report
- LHR-DEL -BA257
- DEL-JOH - AI475
- JOH-DEL - AI476
- DEL-KUU - AI9805
- KUU-DEL- AI9806
- DEL-LHR - BA256
- LHR-MAN - BA1402
The route is a strange one passing through Terminal 1 then outside and on to Terminal 3
I headed to the check-in desk where I didn't have to wait very long.
I had already checked-in online and just needed to drop off my bag. For an almost 2 week stay it was a very light bag as one of my AI flights had a max hold luggage of 13 kg.
Just 12.2 kg, plenty of room left!
I then proceeded to the security check. This was also relatively smooth and I was soon air side with a view of the Flybe fleet.
The departure area was crowded as I had come to expect. The area has been filled with more and more restaurants and shops over the years. I hope the terminal expansion/update will solve these problems and provide more space.
I checked on my flight and it was on it's way but with a slight delay. This wasn't great news for me as my connection time in LHR was quite short and I wold have to transfer from T5A to one of the satellites using the people mover which would take time.
I therefore had some time for a bit of spotting. The usual Ryanair as well as KLM and Flybe
The departure board was showing 20 mins delay.
I kept an eye on the arriving flight and managed to watch it land.
It was therefore time to head to the gate. Gate 142, one of the gates which require a further scan of the boarding card before you gain access. The guy one of the check had a little laugh with me. Apparently I looked very closely at the first camera at the security check.
After a short wait it was time to head down the stairs and onto the tarmac to board.
I was welcomed onboard at the door and took my window seat in 21F.
The seats were of the newer slim line version with adequate leg room on this short flight
In the seat pocket were the usual safety cards and magazines
The safety features of this Airbus A320 were explained using the overhead screens during taxi.
After take off I looked a little at the magazine and found the detailed route map and a nice little interview one of BAs crew. The next leg of my trip to Delhi was described as being 8:50 hrs and a distance of 4165 miles.
The in-flight service was a bit of a rush due to the very short flight time from MAN to LHR. There was a choice of crisps or nuts and I took the interesting looking Thai nuts (which were nice if very small) and a coke.
I was getting worried about my connection time. Not ony did we have the delay but LHR is well known for it's holding patterns. I was hoping that due to our delay we might get to skip this, but this was not the case and we circled round a few times before landing adding to the delay.
Once on the ground we taxied towards T5A. I checked my phone and received messages from my friend who I was meeting on the next leg. She was getting worried about the delay and had asked the crew if they waited for connecting passengers. The rather surly reply seemed to be no they wouldn't wait for me if we were late and she would have to travel to India alone.
We arrived at T5A. It seems we took them by surprise, nobody was there to extend the airbridge. We had to wait for another 20 mins or so while I was getting very worried at this point. This has happened to me before at LHR,it seems rather unorganised of them.
Thanks for reading, the story will continue soon…..
Thanks for this FR.
Good that BA has many flights to India in case of short connections such as yours.
Decent catering for a short flight, too bad it'll be history soon.
Yes the number of flights is a good thing, this might not have helped me much though as my internal connection was booked separately. It would have been a bit of a disaster in that case!
It is nice that catering still exists on these short domestic flights, however with it being so short I doubt i'd miss it too much.
Thank you for this report.
It's a decent product for such a short flight, it's a shame the free catering will be gone next year. They could have kept ot for domestic flights I suppose...
A very stressful connection, it's strange that your friend was told the flight wouldn't be waiting for you when BA actually does its business with transferring passengers as most airlines do...
I think I'd rather have catering on international rather than domestic, I doubt there's an internal flight of more than an about an hour. European short haul can be a longer and that's where I'd rather have it.
The transfer thing would have been annoying, and other airlines have waited. Perhaps it's due to severe congestion at LHR