After a lovely weekend in Stockholm, with lots of good food (proper meat balls and mashed potatoes (non radioactive [;)]) mmmm, we decided to go back to the airport. Because of a little expedition in our rented car that ended up in heavy traffic I had to drive at quite high speeds to arrive at the airport at 5.55, 35 minutes before departure. (Thankfully we had phoned Avis and they where waiting for us at the drop off point and drove us directly to the checkin at Terminal 2).
Rushing up to the checkin desk we quickly got checked in by the ground staff, and told to proceed at once to the gate. One of the benefits of flying BA to Stockholm is that they use Terminal 2, which is tiny and fast. If you fly SAS, which I can't because their website doesn't work on a Mac, you arrive at Terminal 5 Pier F, which is a bloody 10-15 minutes walk away from ANYTHING.
Boarding was a couple of minutes delayed, and no priority boarding for us Club people, I sneaked ahead in and got into my quite comfy seat on this 767. Sadly it was not a long range configured 767 as then you get really comfy seats!
After takeoff we were quickly served with champagne, which was of a quite decent sort and asked which meal we wanted. I had pre-ordered Asian Vegetarian and got a very nice thai curry meal served on real plates. Regular supply off more tiny Champagne bottles and this flight was a breeze for me. The upgrade was around 40 UKP and you can now get Club Europe return to Stockholm for 220 UKP, which is so worth it for the oh so more civilized way of flying.
Arrived in London a few minutes late, nice north eastern approach with a splendid view of the east end, I predict that when the Olympic stadiums have been built this will be my favourite approach vector! Off the plane very quickly, cleared immigration and then, F**K.
I know this isn't BAs fault, rather BAA but what the heck.
One of the benefits of Club is of course the generous carry on allowance, sadly since I had to transport my brothers possessions back to Stockholm, we still had one EMPTY suitcase on the way back, which we had to wait for (plus one parachute that we elected to check because we had something we had to check). On arrival in the tiny terminal 1 luggage room, there was utter chaos, the displays where not working, instead they where showing classic old DOS errors. No signs where up and people where wandering aimlessly between the different luggage vaporisers trying to find their luggage. After an HOURS wait our luggage suddenly appeared on one of them and we could leave this stinking hell. On a 2 hour flight, 1 hour of luggage waiting is completely and utterly ridiculous!
All in all, with the flight itself, I was quite happy with BA and will continue to use them on my flights back home to Stockholm. Especially since I have no choice because of the SAS boycot.
