Arrived at Terminal 3, walked past the Upper Class checkin and though, damn I should be going somewhere warm and sunny for a while, but alas there is an Opera performance waiting and a ticket issued! The security guy doesn't want to let me go to checkin since I have a BA ticket, he tries to send me to Terminal 1 or the BMI checkin. After I calmly tell him that I am booked on SK534 to Stockholm he directs me to the economy line. I walk towards the business class line and he tells me off, so I show him the ticket again, explains to him the fare codes and then ignore him walking over the business checkin. I must say the VS pre screen is way friendlier!
Check-in is quick, they inform me about the lounge and that I can use fast-track, so I scramble through, grab a bite to eat using my 10UKP BA voucher and arrive at the lounge 20.40. Plane is delayed to 22:20 but still maintains the same arrival time, so I skype to my dad and tell him about it, he says in Stockholm they are showing a 2.30 AM arrival and that if it arrives that late I should take a cab, he refuses to pick me up. The SAS London lounge is pretty crap, I mean it looks nice and so on but is pretty much dry and has no food nor free wireless. I tell them that the scheduled arrival time is 2.30 AM but they claim that they are right and it should arrive on time.
At 22.20 they announce that the plane has just arrived, that they need to cater and clean and boarding soon. At 22.40 they call boarding in the lounge and we leave the lounge to find a queue from the lounge to Gate 4 in T3, I find this unacceptable and just walk straight past the 100 or so people waiting and go in front of the queue, someone mutters but I just say business class and ignore him. Straight onboard the pursuer is good, takes me suithanger and my coat but no pre-flight drink offered. The plane is a MD80 and I am 2F with the seat next to me reserved for comfort, which was good since the plane was completely full because of the BA cancel, the lack of pre-flight drink becomes annoying by 23.10 when they announce they had a missmatch of tickets and people onboard, so we would be delayed. Apparently someone had seen it fit to hide in the toilet so by 23.25 we were ready for pushback, but by then the queue to get out of LHR was long and we had 15 planes a head of us, so we took off by 23:45!
The inflight service was good, I had champagne and a salad with a warm chicken breast, then I fell promptly to sleep in the fairly (by short haul standard) ok seats. I still like the BA Club Europe seats better though. Woke up just before landing and notice that in fact, local time was 3 o clock,hopefully there would be taxis waiting to take us into Stockholm.
I was third of the plane, second to passport control to discover that there were no immigration officers there! My blood started to boil at the though of the inefficiencies in the system and the tax I pay for all of this, only then to calm myself down a bit because thankfully I don't pay any tax in Sweden anymore [:)]. They showed up after 10 minutes, probably were drinking coffee or some other union sanctioned activity that was important than dealing with a MD80 full of tired angry people.
Quickly through immigration once they opened, glad I had no checked luggage I was through straight out to a taxi and home to sleep!
I feel like I need to start avoiding the late short-haul flights from Heathrow in July, August, September, they are always having problems!
All in all SK was a ok product, but the price they charge is twice than BA so BA wins hands down on value for money!
Cheers
sky
