V-Flyer

I generally fly from Cork to Heathrow about six times a year on varying flights on the Aer Lingus timetable. Most of the flights, especially the early morning and the late afternoon flights are feeder flights to varying airlines going to the four corners of the earth.

Last Saturday I flew to London on the midday flight and indeed I have in the past used that as a feeder flight also. I was aware in the airport that there were several Americans on the flight and during boarding two friends greeted each other and one was saying he was heading for New Zealand. OK, nothing surprising about that. What was surprising was that when we were coming in to land at LHR the cabin crew announced that all passengers with onward connections and whose bags had been checked should remain seated and after all other passengers had disembarked, leave through the rear of the aircraft and on to the waiting bus which would ferry them to Flight Connections. This was repeated on landing and prior to the doors being opened and sure enough, as we were coming on to the stand a Flight Connections bus was waiting with Aer Lingus typed into its sign.

I have never seen this before and wonder if anyone else has experienced it?

Never seen a bus actually come to the aircraft before, only the annoucement to follow signs for flight connections.

Lucky you got a bus, when I flew in on 09 Oct 2010 from DUB, I followed the Flight Connections signs to T3 that routed me to an underground passageway instead of the T1 Flight Connections Centre. :S

Maybe they were doing some maintenance / refurbishment work hence the change from the normal routine?

That's what I think is happening too (I hope anyway lol), my parents had to use the underground passageway too in July 2010.

However, from T3 to T1, normal FCC buses were operating and T1 FCC seems to be functioning.

Yes, the T1 FC centre is closed for re-building work, so for any passenger with thru checked bags, they bring a bus to the stand, to "whisk" pax to where they can catch a bus to the other terminals.

For those without thru checked bags, they'll have to take the landside UG walkways.

We had this back in August when connecting off EI from DUB to BA to IAD As it came as a bit of a surprise to hear of the bus, we asked the CC what the reason was for the bus arriving at the aircraft.

kered wrote:Yes, the T1 FC centre is closed for re-building work, so for any passenger with thru checked bags, they bring a bus to the stand, to "whisk" pax to where they can catch a bus to the other terminals.

Thanks for that. It makes perfect sense now.

DL901 wrote:Lucky you got a bus, when I flew in on 09 Oct 2010 from DUB, I followed the Flight Connections signs to T3 that routed me to an underground passageway instead of the T1 Flight Connections Centre.

I didn't. I was only going to London and even if I were flying onwards on VS, I prefer to walk over to T3 than use Flight Connections

honey lamb wrote:I was only going to London and even if I were flying onwards on VS, I prefer to walk over to T3 than use Flight Connections

We always prefer to take the landside route too, even if going to T5. (as we've been doing quite a bit of late ) Typically we'll just hop off the EI flight & take the HEX over to T5, same on the way home.

However, when the CC announced on our August flight that all PAX with onward connections with thru checked bags were to take the bus, so we decided it best to do so. I had thought perhaps that there were issues with the HEX, or there were some other changes in place for cnx PAX. But it was just due to the fact that he T1 FC centre was closed for refurb work.

On the BD flight from DUB, there wasn't any announcements made onboard unfortunately stating a bus was provided for passengers with onward connecting flights.

If it was T1 to T5, HEx certainly is way better than the bus.

Landside passageway would have been okay if there was something to see (planes etc), however it was an underground passageway that took 20-30 minutes to walk with only frosted green glass to look at.