#905285 by honey lamb
12 Jun 2015, 23:26
Actually, the flight number on my ticket was a BA one but I can't be bothered to look it up and in any case it was on Aer Lingus metal, so....

We landed at some God-forsaken hour in LHR and because I was next to the door which we had entered, it meant that I was the first off the plane from the upper deck and quickly joined the passengers from the lower deck to the train to the main arrivals area. We were lucky as a train was about to depart so only a handful of passengers were on. However at the next stop, the train was flooded with an influx of early arriving passengers to that satellite. Fortunately it was only a quick trip to Arrivals.

At this stage there was a dilemma presented to me. Did I take the Flight Connections bus to T2 or did I go through Immigration and use the BA Arrivals lounge for a shower and breakfast before making my way to T2 via the Heathrow Express and all that that entailed? :? The showers and breakfast beckoned but the thought of the trek to T2 landside mitigated against it. And what about my onward flight? Oh the bags had been checked through but I still had been unable to check in. I switched and swithered and in the heel of the hunt, decided I really couldn’t face the hassle of traipsing down to the HEX and then the trek from the station to T2 and I really wasn’t hungry for breakfast at that stage. Oh, I had oodles of time to shower etc and come round enough to enjoy breakfast - after all this was something like 6am and my flight didn’t leave till 9.45am but I still hadn’t been able to check in and would only be able to do so in T2. And I wasn’t prepared to go over to T2 to check in and then return to T5 to shower etc. (I’d done that in the past between T1 and T3!)

In the end Flight Connections won and I made my way down to the area where a number of ramp staff coming on duty were waiting to make their ways to the various terminals. I was the first one down there and as I arrived they were occupying all of the seats but one guy sprang into action and offered me his. y) As the other passengers arrived they were not treated to such niceties. Tsk!!

On the bus one thing was bothering me. Now I know a lot of you print off everything and have wallets of itineraries, hotel reservations etc. I don’t, with regard to those. Yes, you need them for theatre/park tickets and the suchlike but whenever I have presented them at check-in desks, hotel receptions, etc, they have been waved aside. In fact there was one situation when I needed to present a ticket at check-in as I was on a stand-by fare and I had to insist to the guy there that he needed it when he tried to hand it back! However, I was now in an unknown situation. It was the first time I was connecting through Flight Connections without an onward boarding pass. On the bus there was a video showing how to use Flight Connections and the re-assuring part was that all you had to do was provide your passport. Great! Not really!

We arrived at T2 and following the signs I arrived at Border Control (which also serves as Immigration for the rest of the UK and Ireland). Now the last time I had been there was when I had had a boarding card which I had fought for and won in LAS. This time I had none and so when demanded one from the guy at Border Control I didn’t have one. :0 He wanted to know to where I was travelling and proof of travel. I told him it was to Cork, gave the flight number as I struggled to bring up my itinerary on my iPhone - and because I had booked it yonkety-yonks ago, could I find it? No I could not! :| The issue was of course, that when you go through Border Control to security your boarding pass is scanned and your photo is taken and later in T2 it is verified at the gate at boarding. But I had no boarding pass! The issue was resolved by yer man taking my photo and placing a bar code in my passport telling me to guard it with my life as I needed it to board the plane. He shouldn’t really have told me this as Sod’s Law or the Honey Lamb Disaster Index would probably kick in and I would lose it. ):

Once through I went through security and into the main T2 area. I passed the Premium Plaza Lounge on my way into the terminal proper and quickly fetched up at the Aer Lingus desk with bar code complete! I was quickly and competently checked in by a very pleasant Indian lady (whatever happened to the delightful colleens who worked for Aer Lingus?) who at my request for a seat at the front of the aircraft, obligingly checked me in to 2F. I asked about shower facilities but was referred to the Premium Plaza Lounge.

Deciding against that for whatever reason, I do not know - possibly because if I had it for free in T5, why pay in T2? In any case both my iPhone and iPad needed charging. T2 has many stations offering free charges both by power outlets which accommodate both UK and USA outlets but also USB. So I set up and prepared to relax. Fat chance! A multi-generation Pakistani family fetched up beside me. The youngest was a holy terror who rampaged unchecked around the area as his siblings tried to constrain him with difficulty!! :0 Several times he went missing to the consternation of the family and of me. I couldn’t move because all the other charging points in that area were taken. Dad, who seemed the leader said that the gate would be announced at 7.30am - only half an hour to go but one of the longest half hours in history as they argued, squabbled, ignored each other etc. A pretty normal family then! ii) One thing made my smile. Granny was sitting opposite me. Occasionally she would throw out some word of wisdom in Urdu, especially with regard to Junior who at this stage, I would cheerfully have throttled but thinking that Aer John, in his worst moments was never as bad as this (he was probably worse but - poetic licence! :w ) Anyhow, in the midst of this maelstrom, Granny fished out a book from her handbag and started to flick through it, alighting on the correct page. I have seen this scene enacted time and time again - it’s part of my (and her ) culture. She had brought out her Quran much in the same way Granny over here would have brought out her prayer book. People are the same the world over.

Having said that I was damned glad when 7.30 arrived and they headed off to a United flight to Washington. God (or Allah) help Washington!

Enjoying the peace that their departure had brought, I pondered as to whether or not to try out the Premium Plaza Lounge but I was disinclined to haul myself out of my seat to trot over there and so spent the time catching up on what had been happening in cyberspace thanks to my enforced lack of connectivity courtesy of the BA lounge. One change I was pleased to see in T2 (and I presume it’s all over LHR) is that the measly 45 minutes of free wi-fi has now been extended to 4 hours. y) Eventually I began to feel a bit peckish and as it was unlikely I would be home before midday, took myself off to the many restaurants in T2 and decided on Ca’puccino where there was an English breakfast with an Italian twist as the toast was made with focaccia! Nicely replete I made my way to the gate area for a bit of plane spotting and saw the plane I had arrived on some three hours earlier
IMG_1052.JPG
and this Dreamliner which had been delivered the day before - and whose registration I have forgotten. Sorry!
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Remember the bar code I had been given and told to guard it with my life? Just as boarding was announced it was missing! :0 Where was it? In the area where I had been charging my phone and iPad? In Ca’puccino? What about the Ladies? The one place it wasn’t was in my passport where the security guy had placed it. xx( I decided the best place to start was in my handbag and so I had the not-so-pleasant job of fishing out my personal belongings for the world to see. Oh there was nothing too incriminating - well perhaps the hairbrush “liberated” from the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Tokyo some years ago :| and the fact that there were three lipsticks which had somehow evaded the scrutiny of security machines on several continents and over several trips! :0 But no bar code! Time to explore the external pockets of the bag and there in all its wonderfulness was the bar code which had rightly decided it should be on the boarding pass and had attached itself there! Much relieved I joined the queue for boarding and soon was ensconced in 2F.

We pushed back slightly early and after that the flight became bog-standard - well almost. It took off and it landed but I didn’t have a G&T. :0 Well it was 10am and although I have been known to partake of the juice of the juniper or the grape at an even earlier time when in an airline lounge, I just didn’t feel like it. For some however, the early hour did not deter them and they had probably come from areas in the world where the sun (and their body clock) was over the yardarm and the cabin crew did a brisk trade! We landed ahead of schedule and I went to claim my bag, happy in the knowledge that the last bin to be loaded in LHR was the transfer bin. Generally this means that my bags come off reasonably quickly but the first flight out of LHR to Cork has a very high percentage of passengers who have arrived on overnight flights from the four corners of the world and so it took slightly longer than usual (although it was interesting to look at the baggage tags as they passed and see the various itineraries displayed). After that it was a quick wave of the passport under the nose of the guy at passport control and I was soon on my way home after a very enjoyable trip.
#905352 by Bretty
13 Jun 2015, 22:29
Well, what a saga to get from one terminal to another! Always an interesting read HL, and I suspect the nice lady who checked you in moved your barcode from passport to boarding pass. But no G&T? Shocking :0

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