Fast bag drop was relatively slow, although not in much of a rush to get through to the domestic lounge of Terminal 1. Looks like there is a lot of rebuilding work going on in the terminal area at the moment. Security was very rapid today, and for some reason shoes were not removed. What did surprise me was that if you didn't check a bag in you didn't need any form of ID apart from your ticket.
Wandered via WHSmiths to get some inflight reading material, then onto Gate 5 used by BA. Absolutely chocker and looking rather dark and depressing. Therefore headed on down to the area used by BMI (gate 8 area) - much lighter and spacious, although of course no BA flight announcements and nothing on the board down there about the BA flights - slightly annoying since there were loads of seats. However decided to spend the 40 minutes waiting here, then head on back to Gate 5. Would be much nicer to have a proper bar area in the domestic departures lounge, rather than just coffee shops selling beer and wine as well.
Headed back to Gate 5, and eventually managed to bag some seats once a delayed flight had left. Our flight then came up as delayed, and within 2 minutes this was changed to Gate 78. That is a bit of a trek and when we got there, there was no plane in sight. Much quieter down there, but nothing apart from seats and the gates. Eventually boarded about 40 minutes late, and then informed that there would be delays with push back and start-up. This was then followed by a very very long taxi down past Terminal 5 to take-off. Reckon we took off in the end about an hour late. However it was a short flight and therefore managed to make up some time and landed only about 40 minutes late, although this isn't great on such a short domestic flight!
In flight - 4 crew, mainly because they have to do a full drinks service and distribute a meal, all in only 50 minutes this time. The 'meal' was a smoked salmon salad which was very tasty, an orange cheesecake, slightly odd, but VERY tasty and all washed down by a bottle of white wine. I am still pretty impressed that they manage to do all this in such a short time, and makes the experience so much better than having to pay on their main domestic competitor (BMI), who make you pay for everything.
All in all not a bad trip and the inflight food / drink service is impressive for such a short flight - the main issue is delays on domestic services really can make a difference, although at least I was heading to Glasgow and therefore the bags were off by the time I had bought a bottle of wine for the hotel that evening!
