On the move part 4: British Airways Club Europe BRU-LHR

The train to Brussels airport was quick an efficient. The process of buying train tickets in Brussels leaves a bit to be desired. There was an automated ticket machine, which (of course) didn't take our credit cards. In fact based on the crowd of people buying tickets from the five staffed ticket widows, no one else's credit card worked in the machine either. And the machine did not take cash.

Fortunately we were prepared for the slight delay purchasing tickets as we had the same experience on the way to Gent a couple of days ago.

Upon arrival at the airport we found the BA checkin area where we were the only customers. The agent initially tried to tell us that our subsequent LHR-BOS flight was operated by American Airlines (it's not - it's operated by BA). The good news is that the agent was able to check us in for the transatlantic flight the flowing day and assign us seats on the upper deck of the 747. The bad news is that BA would be unable to check our luggage all the way to Boston. With just 23 hours in London, we had packed our bag such that our carryons had everything we needed in London.  So we would have to visit baggage claim at Heathrow and lug our bags downtown and back on the pokey Picadilly line.

BA operates a Galleries lounge in Brussels. The lounge was just at the tail end of its breakfast service at 11:00, and we were able to grab one last pain au chocolate before leaving the French-influenced area. The automatic coffee machine made an acceptable cappuccino. The toilets were unfortunately quite far away outside the lounge and therefore shared with the commoners.

Onboard the flight we were seated in row 2. Our seats were the usual convertible seats used in intra-Europe business class although they were subtly different than our seats from Heathrow to Brussels on the way out.  As before, BA had framed artwork hanging on the bulkhead in the aircraft.  A nice touch.

Artwork added some color to the bulkhead.

A light lunch was served which consisted of a fairly tasty cold plate of an eclectic mix of things: chicken with a vaguely Indian spice, a slice of grilled squash with some creamy goo on it, a slice of roasted red pepper, lettuce, tomato, frisée, and a blob of something like a cross between finely mashed tuna salad and hummus.  There were pretzel rolls in the bread basket which are one of our favorites.

Crossing the English channel there were lots of ships. As we neared London we got a great view of a BA 777 flying just below us in a banked turn. It's always neat to see aircraft in flight from above instead of below.

BA 777 flying 1000 feet below us

Closeup of the BA 777 from above.

Our flight path took us north of London giving us a view of central London, some of the Olympic venues, and London City Airport.

Aerial view of central London.  The London Eye is on the left.

Olympic venues.

While taxiing in at Heathrow there were BA planes everywhere.

BA 747 tails at Heathrow.  They should call it Sevenfortyseven-row.

Upon arrival into Heathrow we were through immigration in relative haste only to wait nearly an hour for our baggage. We watched the display above the baggage claim belt change from "Awaiting bags" to "Bags delivered" for our flight without a single bag from our flight coming out.  15 minutes later an announcement was made over the PA apologizing for the delayed bags from our specific flight due to "technical difficulties out at the aircraft." Was the baggage door stuck?

Finally we received our bags 1h 19minutes after flight arrival.  With a flight time of 1h15 minutes gate to gate, it literally took longer to get our bags than it did to fly to London from Brussels.

Our bags were 6th and 17th.  At least the priority tags helped a little bit.