BA use the Air China Business Lounge in Beijing not sure why they dont use the Cathy Pacific / Dragon Air Lounge as a OneWorld member. It is on the floor above the main departures lounge, and is open plan. Before 9am, they offer buffet breakfast and after that there are snacks to help yourself to. There are plenty of soft drinks and cans of beer available in fridges dotted around the lounge. There is also a small bar with spirits and Great Wall wine. Unfortunately all the computers were broken and the WiFi was not working this morning. There were also 6 sleeping pods if you fancied catching up on some sleep. I had a wander around the terminal before heading up to the lounge and purchased some Chinese Liquor and wine. They have an electronic luggage deposit area, which is good to leave the luggage in.
Wandered down to the gate not long before the flight was called for boarding. As I approached boarding had already started, with separate sides for Club World and WT/WTP boarding pass screen initially and then passport/boarding pass screen halfway down the jetty. The airbridge separated so Club World enter via 1L and WT/WTP enter by 2L. I was in 11K, which is in the small cabin behind 2L, so there was a huge queue to get to my seat. Settled down and water / champagne offered quickly. As boarding was completely, a father and two children were moved to the middle of Row 10 from WT apparently they had been separated at check-in and it was easier to reseat them in Club World. However, they were served their WT meals during the flight (Bit mean I thought). WT and WTP were pretty much full, although I reckon that CW was only about 60% full.
On time pushback and short taxi to take off, and headed off into the haze/smog over Beijing. Menus and amenity kits handed out. Drinks again seemed to take forever to be served (I wandered down the plane and the whole of WT/WTP had had their drinks by the time I got mine), which came with something that looked like birdseed!
Lunch options were:
Starters:
Smoked salmon, cucumber salad and wasabi dressing
Grilled asparagus with mustard/Parmesan dressing
Main:
Fillet of beef, shallots and garlic
Stir-fried cod with black bean sauce
Cheese tortellini
Chicken in tomato and basil sauce
Chicken Caesar salad
Dessert/Cheese:
Tiramisu
Selection of cheese
Again, they had run out of one starter, so I had to have the salmon not very good. Beef was good, as was the cheese. The Tiramisu was odd with too much cream and not enough coffee. I had white wine with my starter; when they came to do refills, I said that I would have red with main. When the main arrived, no-one asked about wine and so I pushed my call button. No CC were forthcoming, so I managed to manoeuvre myself out of my seat to go and get it myself. I left the call button unanswered for over 45 minutes, before I turned it off no one ever came!!
Entertainment was on demand failed shortly after it started and therefore the whole system had to be rebooted. Film choices ok, but as on the outbound I had seen most of the new releases, so watched some TV to pass the time. Worked for the majority of the flight, trying to keep myself awake as it was a daytime flight. Used the club kitchen a few times for soft drinks and nibbles again, nice being able to grab some chocolate. They have Covent Garden soup in there maybe I should have had that for a starter! Now I am going to say something about children in club.....no getting annoyed at me. There was a couple with two toddlers in Row 11 of club, and the youngest of the two spent most of the time shouting/screaming during the flight. These things happen, and you cant blame the toddler involved what was annoying was that the parents just had their headphones on watching TV and didnt seem to do anything to try and pacify their child. Some people obviously dont think that others might be being annoyed by what was going on thankfully it wasnt a night flight and I wasnt trying to sleep on board.
Before landing there was a light meal service
Starters:
Parma ham and melon
Tomato and mozzarella stack
Main
Stir-fried pork yu xiang with steamed rice
Chicken with tomato and tarragon sauce
Vegetable tart
Dessert
Selection of fruit
I had the tomato and mozzarella and stir fry pork both were very good.
We landed a few minutes late, without the need to do any circling over the East of England had a great view of the North Sea and the run in from the coast as we came in to land. The Olympic stuff is coming together although I am not sure it will be anywhere as impressive as the stuff that I saw in Beijing! Short take as we landed towards the West and then had a short wait before we could get onto the stand the electronic parking wasnt turned on! At least this time we had a proper gate, but is was T5B it would be great to depart from T5B to see what it is like....maybe next time!
Immigration was very busy, but luckily IRIS was working with only a short queue. Down to baggage reclaim to find that the Beijing flight was down the far end of the baggage reclaim. Priority baggage tagging certainly wasnt working (they used old style club world tags in Beijing) as my bags were almost the last to come off. All passengers from Beijing had to walk single file past lots of customs officials and a customs dog not sure if it was looking for drugs or concealed meat (I think it was the latter) and a large number of people were being taken aside for baggage checks. I walked through and luckily wasnt stopped, and then it was off to find my driver and head on home.
Overall not too bad a flight home marred slightly by the attitude of the parents with the screaming toddler and the lack of choice of starter. Beijing is a wonderful place and really interesting to visit would thoroughly recommend it, although you are limited on direct carriers to BA and at times Air China.
