Review of British Airways flight from London to Boston in Business

Introduction

With two weeks booked off work I decided a trip to New England in early October was the plan. I wanted to travel on an A380, purely for the novelty value, despite knowing that it was the older BA Club World product.
With silver already secured until October 2025, I wasn't concerned about this trip being one to keep my status (we'll see what I get up to for that soon). I had a bunch of Avios burning a hole in my pocket, so I booked a return trip on BA202/203 using 100,000 Avios and £850. This is what BA call Avios & Money (Reward Flight Saver).

The Airport

I arrived at London Heathrow Terminal 5 at about 11:45, approximately 2.5 hours before departure. I dropped my checked bag at the bag drop - I had done the document check online by using the BA iPhone app's passport scanning function. I made my way through north security which was not very busy.

I planned to head straight to the B Gates Galleries Club lounge, as I knew my flight would be departing from the C Gates today. After I had picked up some toiletries in the Boots in the B satellite terminal, I got a great view of two A380s parked next to each other - knowing that one of them is mine!

I was soon settled down in a comfy chair in the lounge, where I downloaded some content to watch on my iPad on the flight using the free lounge WiFi which was blisteringly fast.

I also made use of the salad bar to have a pre-departure lounge snack in the form of some pasta…

… and some more pasta!

Over to the gate…

Soon it was time to head over to the gate, which today was C56 - located in the Satellite C part of Terminal 5. Once again I took the foot tunnel, crossing underneath the taxiways and then heading up an escalator to the departures level.

Once I had made my way towards the gate, the boarding process was a bit chaotic as a result of there being so many Group 0 and 1 customers on-board. There were also a large number of pre-boards. I stood nearby at gate C57 and looked at this seat map of the A380 - you don't realise how vast the plane is until you see a seat-map like this…

Soon the call was made for Group 2 passengers to join the queue, and I took advantage of being able to get closer to the window to take this snap of G-XLEE waiting to take us to Boston this afternoon.

Whilst we were standing in the tensa barrier queue, they said that there was an issue with the upper deck and they were waiting for engineers to clear before upper deck passengers could board. However by the time I had snaked my way round we were allowed to board.

On-board

I made my way along the upper-deck jetbridge, which is certainly a novelty, and was welcomed on-board and directed across the galley to my seat, which was at the rear of the smaller cabin on the upper deck. This is one of the few window seats which offers direct aisle access, although it is very tight. The majority of window seats require stepping over someone's legs if they are in a reclined position. You can also see that the privacy divider, which must be down for taxi, takeoff and landing, makes the seat a bit awkward if you are not travelling with your seat mate.
The cabin is certainly showing its age, but still perfectly comfortable with more padding than the newer Club Suites.

A pre-departure beverage was soon served in the form of an orange juice, with water and champagne also available.

Menus were also distributed at this time…

A look out of the window showed a Boeing 777-236(ER) parked up on the adjacent stand - I didn't realise at this point that I would be travelling back to the UK on a 777.

Soon it was time to push back and taxi over to the departure runway, 09R. It started properly pouring with rain as we made our way along the taxiway.

The flight and lunch

We took off and rapidly turned towards the south and then west, offering a great view of Heathrow airport and the surrounding area as we climbed out.

I popped the screen out of its cubby and set it to the moving map, my favourite bit of entertainment on a plane.

Soon it was time for lunch, which started with a Citrus Burst mocktail served with a "salted rosemary snack mix".

This was followed by the Chicken Caesar salad which was nice, but I had to try to avoid the cheese which I have a slight allergic reaction to. Nothing major on a short-ish flight, but worth avoiding. The usual BA three-bread roll and some rock-hard butter, which I warmed by putting in the middle of the warm bread for a while.

I chose the Railway lamb curry as my main course. It was really good, and not overcooked. BA is really good at curries (I had the butter chicken on my March trip to Denver) and I'll always go with it if I can.

Dessert was the sticky toffee pudding. Of course! I thought it could do with some ice-cream or something with it though.

The flight passes…

The front toilets on the A380 are absolutely vast. I was truly staggered at the size - but as the fuselage curves down at this point you don't get a huge amount of headroom towards the front.

I settled down and watched The Grand Tour which I had downloaded to my iPad. I also tried the WiFi but it didn't work. I went for a wander and thought I might try going downstairs, but it was blocked off.
The pre-landing snack was not appealing to me but I did get a chocolate muffin and another drink. The chocolate muffin was served warm, which was really nice.

Soon we were descending into Boston, but due to the wind direction we were landing from the south. This meant we passed just to the east of the airport as we flew overhead to join the approach path - another great airport view on this flight!

Arrival

The weather was glorious as we came in to land over the Quincy area, where I would stay at the end of my trip.

We landed on 4R and had to wait for other traffic to clear 4L before we could cross the runway on our way to gate E12.

The arrival at the gate was prompt and the jetbridge was attached quickly and we were soon on our way to customs and baggage reclaim. I was through immigration promptly and after a visit to the bathrooms, my bag was making its way around the carousel. I was at my hotel by 18:00 having arrived at the gate at 17:11.