#237853 by sky
09 Sep 2005, 22:26
Trip back to Stockholm over the weekend to see the opening night of Das Rheingold at the Royal Opera, scheduled to fly on a I fare in Club World to Stockholm at 20:00. Decide to take a bit of luxury and order a Virgin Limobike to take me to Heathrow!

Friend calls me in the morning and informs me he will be at Heathrow at 4.30 for 90 minutes and it would be cool if we could meet so I rebook the Limo Bike for 3.30.

I pack everything into a tiny little case, I have never had this little luggage, and most of it is my brothers. The bike shows up and thankfully the bag fits! I opt not to take trousers on since the weather looks fine, this turns out to be a misstake.

Let me say, if you have the option to try the limobike, WOW it was fun! It was 5 years since I was on a bike and that was an old WWII BMW. I cannot imagine anything better than going on one of these after arriving from a redeye!

After a while it started raining, so we stopped and geared up a bit to avoid getting soaked, thankfully! Minutes later when we where somewhere in Hammersmith the heaven opened up and it poured down, parts of the road turned into a river! I told the driver that meant my flight would be cancel but he thought since it was quite short I would be fine, but I was right!

I got to LHR T1 at 3.30 and got dropped off at the premium checkin, straight in, went up to the ticket desk and asked nicely that despite the fact my ticket wasn't rebook-able, could I pretty please go on the earlier (and two hour delayed plane) since I had shown up at the airport earlier. The agent so no, I told him I feared that the later plane would be cancelled and he said of course it wouldn't and that there was no commercial reason to let me go earlier even though business class was pretty empty. I now wish I took his name!

Checkin was very quick and BA Premium Checkin experience at T1 is very quick and very good, quickly through to the lounge where I am given a 10 quid voucher for food and advised to take a afternoon tea-box on board.

Sadly my friends flights were delayed and he didn't have time so he had to run to catch his AA155 to Boston, thankfully he is elite so they held off waiting for him [:)].

The lounge had extra food, it was pretty good I have never had time to spend in the Terraces lounge, nothing at all like the Clubhouse of course but this is a short haul lounge. Food and drinks were decent but no Champagne!

At 19.20, 10 minutes after the departure of the previous flight they announced the cancelation of my flight. I walked briskly out straight through arrivals, upstairs to departures past the ENORMOUS queue for Y pax and to the premier checkin area to get rebooked, and thank god I was so quick because I get a seat on SK534 to Stockholm in Business (so I get 1 VS TP [:)]). That flight is scheduled to leave at 21:05 so I make my way over to terminal 3. Now if only that sour agent would have moved me up I would have been in Stockholm now, not arriving past midnight [:(]. Bad customer service!

So, not really a trip report since I didn't get anywhere, I am currently in the SAS Lounge and I will post a second part of the TR if I get somewhere.

That said, Virgin limobike is an excellent service :). If you have a lot of baggage combine it with the baggage pickup service and be completely free of stress [:)].

Cheers
sky

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