Be ready though as I believe this week BA will be announcing the opening of their Club/Silver check in area. Since original posts a fast track at security has indeed appeared.

In response to your comments about the arrivals lounge… I was also impressed by it when arriving on an overnight trip from JFK in Club. Just what I needed, the scrambled egg was even runny, and the showers were great!

Good job BA, an airline that continues to win my custom any day over the likes of Virgin with their stupidly gimicky lounge. Use some of the other LHR terminals again, experience tiny over-crowded, dated lounges, or BA’s refreshing service and product… I know what wins my vote.

I have gold access and the comments on the lounges are bang on – none of them are actually as good as the club/silver one at T4, there’s no real difference between club/silver and first/gold, the experience is ultra bland and getting to either of the lounges (there’s a north one and south one, and only the south one has a first/gold lounge) can require a very long and convoluted walk. Note that the north one is actually right next to north security (there are two security gates), but if you used your gold to get personal check in at first, you’re starting at the southmost point.

Generally, it’s not awful, and T5 now seems up to speed for the regular traveller, but BA could have done a lot better for their premium passengers.

First class lounge is huge and impersonal, food is lousy and drinks are placed far, far away from the food.

A real disappointment.

http://yamazakikun.livejournal.com/54066.html

Someone with a $20 WiFi access point and no ethics could have some serious fun with T5′s electronic signage.

The first flight- 3 days after launch, wasn’t a happy experience……but twice into and once out of since then, it’s been a dream.

Maybe i was one of the lucky ones, or more likely all we’re hearing about are the negative experiences.

Of course people’s expectacions have been raised, and BAA need to deliver on this. i stress BAA. It’s their responsibility.

I’d still rather fly from T5 again, before i had to deal with the misery of the rest of heathrow.

Here are some notes from my 3 April experiences LHR-GLA-LHR:

So far living up to all expectations. After a surprisingly painless valet drop off at the South end, a helpful “Can I Help” lady pointed me to security. There are North and South security entry points, both providing access to the same common area. The security screening at the South took 24 minutes to clear, so nicely in excess of the promised ten.

Six minutes were to wait to have my picture taken. All UK destination pax get this special treatment although everyone has to queue up. Two out of the six positions were manned.

Then I had to wait eighteen minutes in the x-ray line. Yes, only one of about six xray machines were running at this South end, although two more did start to open up after some time.

The overhead displays state that you “may” be asked to take your shoes off. So, as I wasn’t asked I didn’t, although all the sheep in front of me did remove their shoes regardless. I went through the body scanner, no alarms, but then I was told to go back through and take my shoes off anyway and re-scan.

Lots of people with clipboards around the screening area.

Everything scanned on the xray must be placed on a tray including rollaboards. The trays are supposed to automatically recycle, but as I waited for my stuff to come out of the xray machine the system had failed and there was a pile of trays backing up. This had to wait for one of the clipboard guys to turn up to deal with, meanwhile half a dozen gormless looking security staff looked on helpless.

I mentioned to Mr Clipboard it had taken 24 minutes to clear security, and to be fair he apologised, something to do with the staff being in a meeting. But I really don’t care why: the point was they failed miserably to meet their own promised criteria of ten minutes.

I discovered that Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food outlet doesn’t open until 6am for breakfast, so I wondered around for ten minutes. The South Exec Club lounge is shut “due to flooding” another very helpful “Can I Help” chap informed me – I wryly thought “You couldn’t make it up!”.

I took a quick look around the North Exec Club, or Galleries as they’re now called. Nothing particularly new or interesting except I noticed some people with Champagne glasses, but it wasn’t obvious where they’d found the Champagne: none of the bar areas I saw had any. The usual BA breakfast fare: tiny bacon rolls, croissants etc.

So back the Ramsay’s for sustainance. Well I’ve hear some bad stories about this place, but my Classic full monty breakfast was as good as it gets. I am afraid that this is highly likely to become an instituation for me.

Bill total: £18.56 including service. Slightly sloppy service but the tea was right proper tea. Freshly squeezed OJ. Fried eggs done to perfection. All prepared served in barely over five minutes.

OK off to find my flight.

Escalator down to air bridge was u/s so it was stairs. Air bridges are uber long.

Boarding was all rather easy – it was only about 30% full, I guess that everyone’s avoiding BA, although it didn’t stop the ticket costing top dollar yesterday.

Then guess what??? Plane went tech. Yip, you got it. They fixed it and we finally took off half an hour late.

On the return, the flight was an hour late due to a crew sickness. Other than suffering the awfully tired GLA Exec Club lounge, not much to report other than the deplaning. Surprisingly BAA had actually realised we were turning up, and remarkably they had someone ready to operate the airbridge. But it was all too good to be true: the five-year-olds attempting to operate the airbridge took fifteen minutes to connect. Would have been quicker to have been bussed from a remote stand.

Looking forward to tomorrow’s trip.

Cheers, Howard