Introduction
Time to head home from Denver after almost two weeks! On the last day I went to the Colorado Railroad Museum, headed up Lookout Mountain and went to FlyteCo for lunch plus a tour of a control tower - more about that in the tourism bonus at the end!
Enchainement de vols
- 1
- 2BA218 - Business - Denver → London - Airbus A350-1000
The Airport
I quite like the experience at Denver. The car hire drop-off experience was good, and I took the time to get changed at the car hire facilities which I knew would be quieter than anything landslide at the airport.
A painless check-in experience, although the BA check-in desks are not where they are according to the information you get when you complete OLCI.
BA uses the United Club Lounge above gate A24, which is multi-level and has some nice views looking back across towards the main terminal building.
It looked like it would be a very full flight tonight, in contrast to my outbound which was practically sparse by contrast!
3 of 56 seats available in Club World
1 of 56 seats available in World Traveller Plus
20 of 219 seats available in World Traveller
After an hour or so it was time to head over to the gate, which was A37. I hadn't rushed to the gate for the 17:55 boarding time stated on my boarding pass, as I knew it would be a scrum and there wouldn't be much pressure on overhead bin space even with a full flight.
On Board
I was one of the last business class passengers on board, if not the last. I was not offered a pre-departure beverage as the crew were already collecting them by the time I sat down. The menu had already been placed on the seat, which I'll show in a while.
Once the jet bridge was shunted out of the way, I had a view looking down the concourse to some long-haul heavies headed across the Atlantic as well as this Panamanian 737.
We were soon airborne and it wasn't long before the sun was setting.
Tonight there was a fairly good looking menu. Unfortunately I had ordered a special meal, a Low Lactose Meal.
Note that this menu is also in use for BA flights from Philadelphia and Portland.
Here was my starter, some chickpeas, tomato and some anonymous white substance. It was served stone-cold and I was really not impressed.
There was a fruit salad as a side salad, and garlic roll plus crackers and vegetable-oil spread.
And this was the main, a chicken and vegetable dish. The chicken was incredibly dry and the vegetables were very overcooked. It was a very disappointing main meal.
And despite the side salad being a fruit salad, so was the dessert. I wasn't in the mood and decided to head to bed.
As usual the Club Suite is on the limit for me, being in excess of 6ft, but I found a comfy position and was asleep until the 40 minute to landing announcement from the cockpit. We were already over Manchester by that time, and we could expect at least one loop over my house before landing.
Looking out over Coventry (I think).
And our first glimpse of Heathrow as we headed west to join the approach path near Reading.
The town of Henley down below.
It was a smooth landing, as captured by Flight Focus 365 on their Heathrow camera:
We were headed to the C gates, but I liked this shot of Finnair's A350-900 headed back to Helsinki as we taxied in.
And we pulled onto gate C56 next to G-ZBJA, a 787-9 headed to Dulles later that day.
A bit of a wait for the jet bridge to be attached to the L2 door, but we were soon into the terminal.
A final look at G-XWBM before I headed to the border and it returned back to Denver.
I used the level -4 walkways to get from the C-concourse to the A-concourse, and I was easily the first person from my flight to the border. I was through in less than 2 minutes (mostly due to other people not understanding how the e-gates work) and headed down to the baggage reclaim belt. I was the first person waiting there for almost 5 minutes before anyone else turned up!
My bag was not the first out, but it was only a 5-6 minute wait before it appeared on the belt and I made my way to the arrivals lounge to have some breakfast.
The arrivals lounge is great for both people-watching and getting a much higher-quality breakfast than can be expected on the plane.
