#62 out of 94 Airlines A minimum of 10 flight-reports within the past two years is required to appear in the rankings.
967 reviews
Well this Flight Report is going to be a very juicy one, so I hope you're ready!
So less than three hours before me and my mate Tom were due to jet off to Paris for the 2023 Paris Air Show- we get an email from BA informing us that our flight, BA304, at 06:55am to Paris CDG has been cancelled… Oh bummer…
However, with a stroke of luck we had been rebooked onto the BA306 service to Paris CDG leaving at 08:45am, okay we get to fly on the day, its a little behind, but its not the end of the world. All is good!
A final insult during our wait was that our flight would end up being delayed by another thirty minutes…
By the time we got to Paris CDG it was about 5 minutes from 12pm local time, and BA logged the plane's arrival at a time where our total delay time was annoyingly 2hr 59min. Just one minute bellow compensation via EU-261.
My friend is a travel agent and last I heard was taking this up with BA for compensation as we had a cancelled flight, plus our rebooking was delayed itself. I don't know why the original Paris CDG flight was cancelled, but at least we got to the Paris Air Show in the end!
Onto the more cheerful aspects of this review….
We left my mates vehicle in the Long-Stay carpark for London Heathrow's Terminal 5, a shuttle bus took us over to Terminal 5 and we went over to grab a glimpse of the morning sunrise from the departure level before heading to the check in desks.
It was a beautiful view that morning, overlooking a handful of British Airways Airbus A320s.
My mate Tom held OneWorld Emerald status at the time of this flight, so we had access via the First Wing- having only been privileged to hold OneWorld Sapphire for a year, this was very exciting for me as I'd never done the BA First Wing and had a taste of what its like flying as a OneWorld Emerald flyer.
Unless someone wants to be very generous to me, I can't see me ever getting a OneWorld Emerald card of my own either with Finnair Plus (who I am with) or BA Executive Club.
The FIRST WING is a check in and security area at Terminal 5 which allows BA First Class passengers or OneWorld Emerald (BA Gold Card holders) flyers to go to an exclusive check in and security lane before heading direct into the First Class lounge. Ironically despite being the First Class Lounge, there isn't likely to be anyone in this Lounge flying First Class as they would be likely hanging out in the Concorde Room by invitation, making the First Lounge the BA Gold Card holders lounge in a roundabout way!
The first lounge is quite a large area, appearing to me to be slightly larger than the BA Galleries Lounge. The place is split between two service areas for wine, champagne and coffees, a balcony area, a bar and a food buffet area.
Whilst there are toilets in the First Lounge, if you want a shower (which I enjoyed) you need to leave the First Lounge and use the facilities which are available to the First/Emerald users and the Business/Sapphire users- I don't find an issue with this, but I am sure there is some high tier status flyer who thinks this is a bad thing…
We kicked off with a hot breakfast as we had gotten to the lounge quite early on, there was a nice selection to dive into for hot and cold options. After the shower, we moved over to a sofa chair and bench where I enjoyed an orange juice and porridge, I popped over to the Balcony of the First Lounge to see what it was like, I was quite impressed.
A champagne and some fancy port wine was in order, yes- it was 7:30am, but I wasn't driving that day, so I opted to enjoy some fancy booze, I mean why not!
I'm not familiar with Port and Champagne, but I screen shot the selections I made that morning and posted it here for those to see and provide a reference for anyone interested.
It was a pretty good experience, a very chilled experience as well. However time passed, and we had to get through to the T5B Gates via the Monorail, so it was time to leave the T5 First Lounge.
The departure out of Terminal 5B allowed me to go visit the T5B Galleries Lounge. Somewhere I hadn't been able to access before.
First off, a quick monorail trip from T5A to T5B was in order…
Its a very small lounge, but it makes for a nice getaway if you know you have a plane leaving the T5B Gates, the lounge is often occupied by passengers on the long-haul flights as the T5B Gates are usually dominated by the British Airways Boeing 777s, Boeing 787s and Airbus A350-1000.
The self service areas offered a mix of hot drinks, alcoholic beverages and cold soft drinks. Some continental breakfast items and cereals were on offer by the entrance. The seats were spread out and they had quite a few comfortable sofa seats or lounge chairs.
I opted to enjoy a Manhattan cocktail drink already mixed up in a bottle. Our flight was delayed at the Gate by another 30 minutes before boarding was due to go, so it allowed a bit longer in the lounge… absolute hell- but someone has to suffer I guess…
Eventually we got the chance to board the aircraft, so it was time to get to the Gate as we had Group 1 boarding privileges.
We boarded our Airbus A320 for this short flight to Paris CDG, which was going to be G-EUYJ, delivered brand new to British Airways in October 2010 and has been in service since then. During the pandemic it was one of 30 Airbus A320 family stored at my local airport Bournemouth Hurn and it spent a further five months stored at London Gatwick & Palma de Mallorca, returning officially into service in April 2021.
Despite the change of plane last minute, I was able to get a window seat, being sat at Seat 28F. Towards the back of the plane but it had a good view of the rear cargo door being loaded during boarding.
Eventually we pushed back and made our journey over to the departure runway, even being allowed ahead of some other BA planes also on their morning shuttles out across the UK and Continent. We would still make the Paris Air Show despite the hassles we faced that morning.
We lined up on Runway 27L and darted out over East Berkshire passing Terminal 3 and 5 as we lifted off, the sight of the parked up Qantas Boeing 787 & Airbus A380 being a little tease as to what I'll be up to in November 2023!
The pilots made the turns to head South for the English Channel and across to France. The weather seemed nice and summery with some medium scattering of clouds throughout the flight.
One plus side of flying the Airbus A320ceo is that the older design seats feature through the cabin, though they do shrink on the legroom offering, but I am short enough (or tall enough) that I rarely have issues with legroom on economy flights.
The flight was pretty full, but I did notice some empty seats on the plane, obviously most of the passengers who were on the cancelled BA304 flight must have been easily re-booked onto this flight and taken that option!
It took us about 15 minutes of flying time to cross the English Channel, leaving England over Dorset and then passing into France over Normandy. The crew did the usual complimentary service of a bottle of Harrogate water and a Kellogg's breakfast bar.
After a quick toilet visit, I did ask the crew for another bottle of water to take to the Air Show as I was expecting a very warm day there, they obliged by giving me three bottles- so I opted to hand one to Tom.
Before we knew it, it was time to begin our decent into Paris Charles DeGaulle Airport. It was a similar weather to the UK, warm & sunny with good weather and some scattered cloud cover.
We landed into Paris CDG and had a behemoth taxi across the Airport to take us to Terminal 2B, where most of the OneWorld Alliance airlines congregate alongside some independent airlines and easyJet. Today we parked next to a Air Tahiti Nui Boeing 787-9 and Royal Air Maroc Boeing 737-800, an Air Canada Boeing 777-300ER occupied our left side.
I was the last passenger off the plane, I didn't rush as I was right at the back of the aircraft, and it would save me much time trying to hustle off in a hurry. I said goodbye to the crew at the rear of the plane and made my way out of the Airbus A320.
After everything we'd made it Paris! According to BA we were officially 2hr & 59min late (including the delay from the cancelled first flight)… a very sneaky way of blocking us from an EU-261 compensation claim, my friend is trying to take this up with BA. Though anyone who booked this flight out-right was only about 30 minutes behind.
Either way- it was off to the Paris Air Show 2023!!!
British Airways handled us well by getting us on the next flight, the Lounges at LHR were on point and I can't fault them. Whether we get compensation over our delay getting to Paris is another matter, but the flight we took went as good as you could expect in Euro Traveller on a 40-45 minute flight from London to Paris.
Paris Air Show was outstanding and I am very happy to have ticked it off my bucket list... Paris Air Show in 2025 perhaps? We'll have to see...
Les contributeurs de Flight-Report ont posté 115 avis concernant 2 compagnies sur la ligne London (LHR) → Paris (CDG).
La compagnie qui obtient la meilleure moyenne est Air France avec 7.5/10.
La durée moyenne des vols est de 1 heures et 11 minutes.
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2 Comments
I swear they do it on purpose. I've seen them do something similar with another delay recently
Although I have OW Emerald status I've never had the opportunity to use the First Wing since it's been built as I'm either always in transit at LHR and have bags checked through already, or just don't have any bags to check, so just go through Fast Track security. I wonder if First Wing security might be faster than Fast Track
Not necessarily...since the Concorde Room is only for BA First class flyers, all other oneworld airlines' First class passengers would have to go to the First class lounge. Granted most other OW carriers with First class are back to operating from T3, but there should still be some, especially connecting pax from First class
Nice Paris Air show bonus.
Thanks for sharing!
Pretty much the case for anyone in the Concorde Room as BA is the only First Class product flying out of LHR T5, all the other airlines (AA, Cathay, JAL) with First are in T3. Making the "First Lounge" basically for Gold Card holders. As for what happens with the EU-261 case, I'll see what occurs...
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