Having been a 100% economy traveller in the past I thought I'd treat us to a little luxury for this long flight. Considering we were only to be in Thailand for 8 nights I didn't want to waste a minute through tiredness. I'd previously booked a 'connecting' flight with Thai Air Asia on to KBV but I realised pretty late on that I'd left the gap too small and BR had put back the LHR departure by 30mins to 2200 since my tickets were printed, giving a new arrival time of 1615. Therefore, the night before I managed to get 2 quite cheap seats on to KBV using TG with checkin closing 1825 - at least I wasn't going to be sweating (or so I thought!). The checkin at LHR was deserted and Elite gets its own desk with an extremely helpful chap who unfortunately didn't manage to check us or our bags through on to TG at BKK.
Sitting near the front of the 777 I could see that for once, everyone was onboard easily on time so I relaxed ... and as the clock kept ticking I increasingly pondered as to when we'd be pushing off. At 2210 an announcement told us 'there will be a 15 min delay as the ground crew are working' [:?], not sure BA would've gotten away with that announcement! Anyway, we eventually pushed back about 2245 and tookoff at precisely 2300. Soon after takeoff the rather excellent IFE was switched on - this certainly gives VPort a run for its money and I especially love the touchscreen - the controller remained firmly holstered the entire flight. Going straight to the map I found to my horror that the estimated arrival time was 1809! As a wave of depression hit me [:#] I asked the stewardess what options we had at BKK - the best and only thing she could offer was to let us off first. Funnily enough my girlfriend noticed the screen change just a couple of minutes later and arrival was now 1709 - obviously the clock had been set wrongly! Phew !!!
I like the configuration of Elite with its 2-4-2 arrangement - the Y 3-3-3 isn't great for these BKK flights since the load factors are seriously high. I found a friend of mine in the same section and started chatting to her about the wave of relief when an urgent announcement interrupted us - 'we have a seriously ill passenger on board, is there a doctor onboard?'. With mixed feelings of sorrow for the poor guy and resignation to depression again that I may well miss my connecting flight due to a divert I went back to my seat [:#]. Thankfully for all a doctor was onboard and soon had him right - just took a few glasses of sugary water[:D].
The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful - while the Elite seats are standard PE - 38inch legroom plus extra recline - the meals are totally Economy including the plastic cutlery - although Elite does get first dibs. Also, there are no extra drinks rounds at all - purely the same as Y.
A top notch landing at BKK and reasonably fast Passports saw us through to the TG desks with plenty of time to spare - how nice not to have to change terminals. Incidentally, this was my first time at the new BKK and I found that the security is as at Don Muang just before the gate leaving no possibility of getting water until you're on the plane. The flight to KBV was great - an old A300 with psychedelic colour scheme internally and one of the old RGB projectors but got us there fine - including getting bulkhead seats without even asking for them![:)]
With extra legroom the whole way I may have been mentally tired but physically fit - and was worth the extra money for me despite there being precious few other perks.
