The flight came up as boarding at 18:15 pretty much as scheduled on and we again queried whether it was boarding or not yet (BA website was still showing a departure time of about 25 mins late). The lounge staff member said she didn't know, but used the good old excuse that the AF lounge in LIS always use to get rid of people that there would be huge queues at security. Since everyone else was leaving, we decided we would head off to the gate. I got the impression that we wouldn't have been told anything about a delay, so that the staff could close up and get home! Security, as every time I have been to LIS, was empty and they have automated gates for those people with chipped passports. Wandered to the gate, in the new extension of the terminal, to find that people were still getting off the plane. We stood around for a while and eventually boarding was called. Started walking down the jetty to find that in fact we were being boarded to wait on the airbridge! Finally we got onto the plane and settled into Row 1 (there were 8 rows of club which were about half empty).
We had some very strong tail winds, so we were able to make up the delayed departure of about 25 minutes and actually arrived about 10 minutes early! As a consequence, the flight itself was very bumpy and this meant that the crew spending nearly two thirds of the flight seated. We managed to have the meal service which was chicken in a cream sauce with vegetables or spicy salmon and egg noodles, followed by a pear mousse and cheese. I had the chicken which was ok (and only just ok), with cheap looking bits of chicken. There was no pre-dinner bar service, which I wasn't sure if this was a cutback or due to the turbulence, but I did have some champagne during dinner and afterwards.
Arrived at a windy and wet T3, descended the steps as there are no proper gates for BA short-haul arrivals at T3 (luckily it had stopped raining) and through passport control and off to my waiting pre-booked car.
The main disappointment about this flight, as before, was the AF lounge that BA use - the staff in there are very poor and not helpful at all and don't portray a good image for BA.
