Review of British Airways flight from London to Stockholm in Business

introduction

Whilst this is technically a holiday it ended up becoming a bit of a tier-point run! With 540 tier-points accumulated from my BA Holiday to Denver and back, I needed just two more flights and 40 tier-points to get to Silver status in the BA Executive Club.
With that in mind, I booked a trip to Stockholm. Unfortunately due to time-constraints I wouldn't be able to make it a BA Holiday (so no double tier-points on this one) but I got a great price on both the flights and the hotel separately.

An early flight

With a 07:10 departure, I was facing a bit of a dilemma as I was working until 23:00 the night before. With the time it would take me to get home and with the time required to get back to Heathrow in the morning, I would be looking at barely 3 hours sleep.
I looked at the cost of a taxi to Heathrow in the morning and it was pushing £60, so I booked the Thistle hotel for £70. Necessary? No, not really. But worth it? 100% - I got at least another two hours of sleep in the morning!
The best part is… only my second ever trip on the pods! A bit of a wait for a free one to become available, and I shared my journey with someone returning to Inverness after a work-related day trip to London.

It was looking like a glorious morning in London.

heathrow

The airport was quieter than expected for the time of the morning - I think Thursdays do seem a bit quieter generally - and I quickly managed to drop off my bag. With a departure from the A-gates looking likely, I made my way to the Galleries South lounge which was quiet and really quite serene. I doubt it stayed like that for long.

I had a few glasses of orange juice and some pastries whilst waiting for the gate to be announced.
Soon, it was time to board so I made my way down to the gate. Of course, it's the one right underneath where I was sat! I could just about see a glimpse of our aircraft taking us to Stockholm that morning - G-EUPD.

on-board

I arrived just as boarding for Groups 1-3 was announced (so I was a bit too late to see if they announced the new GGL-exclusive Group 0 - not that I'll ever get to benefit from that). As a Group 1 due to being in Club Europe, I was soon on-board.
I always try to choose row 1 on BA short-haul aircraft, and I managed to get 1F on this flight. I always value more knee-room than leg-room, so whilst I know many of my taller travellers will say that the other rows of Club Europe give you more leg-room as you can stretch out, I'm happy with row 1!

Whilst waiting for the remaining passengers to board, I took the pleasure to watch a very efficient maintenance engineer fixing a cargo-loading vehicle. Bit smoky when it started the first time!

We were soon taxiing down to runway 27R, quite a lengthy taxi from the gates on the south side of T5. The windows had really seen better days.

We were soon airborne into a glorious April morning over south-east England. 

No menus were handed out on this flight. After take-off we were offered a choice of three breakfasts - the traditional "full-English", a vegetarian omelette, and this "continental plate".
I really only wanted some fruit, the yoghurt and the croissant, so I turned the tray around. The croissant was nicely warmed without being incinerated or turning into flaky mush - nice work BA. I again had a glass of orange juice - no top-ups were offered. I saw others were being offered top-ups of pastries and drinks so not sure what I did to (not) deserve that.

One of the best things about these older members of the A320 family is the adjustable air vents - really valuable on flights to warmer destinations, less so on a flight from the UK to Sweden in April. Spot where the old in-flight information screens are as well - these are not used on any of BA's short-haul fleet anymore; all safety demos are done by the crew and if you want info on your height and speed, no chance!

With no WiFi on this aircraft, all that was left to do was to look out the window and relax whilst listening to a podcast.

arlanda

Soon we were approaching Stockholm, coming in to land on 01L. A short taxi to the gate and I was soon off the plane. It took a few minutes to get through immigration - the Swedish immigration authorities living up to their reputation for asking lots of questions!
I used the bathroom in the baggage claim hall and by the time I was at the baggage carousel, my bag was just popping out.
Free advice - the trek from the baggage claim in T2 to the railway station in T5 is really quite a long journey! But it has some great apron views along the way, which is always lovely.