Just flew British Airways Business class from London-LAX

LOOOOOOOOOVED IT!!!

 

I collected points from my husband's Chase Sapphire points, and got myself one, too, to pay for the cruise and all the hotels, tickets, etc. Double points on travel purchases. The new card gives you 40,000 points, and the "spend" requirement was $3,000. So, I ended up with close to 62,000 points, plus my husband's points to make it 150,000 points for my friend and I in business class.

 

We flew home last Saturday, 4/15/17, and I booked the flights when they opened last April. We paid a total of $1,028 for BOTH of us, plus seat fees.

 

We sat in 10E/F, which are the first seats next to the kitchen. No noise problems from there, and my friend had a connecting flight in LAX to OAK, so we wanted to be out the door and off to Customs/Immigration asap.

 

Such a pleasure to have those seats. Fully adjustable from upright all the way to lie flat, and every position in between. I run hot on planes, so I took the nice quilted blanket and made a sleep pad on the lie flat. Worked great! The foot rest has two positions: higher for the lie flat, and lower for seated. I have to sleep with the head of my bed elevated, and I was able to get this easily with this seat.

 

TONS of movies and entertainment, really great food and free drinks. We couldn't eat or drink everything they offered us.

 

Amenity kit was nice with decent headphones (I fly with my Bose, so I didn't use them; friend said they were great). Elemis toiletries, sleep mask, socks, earplugs, toothbrush, toothpaste, and a nice string bag to take with us. Larger than average bathroom.

 

All in all, a great experience.

 

Oh, and the GOES Known Traveller card? Worth every penny of the $100 fee. We zipped to the kiosks while about 300 people waited in the Customs/Immigration line. Got my friend to the Southwest terminal almost 1.5 hours before her flight. And, TSA pre-check for 5 years!!! And, went to Las Vegas to have our GOES interview!

Thanks. What type of plane was it?

BA has two flights a day LHR-LAX, both with an A380. They codeshare on two AA flights with 777 equipment.

Thanks. What type of plane was it?

 

An A380: British Airways nonstop.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Glad it worked well.

 

Keith

Very nice. Thank you for taking the time to share.

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

BA does get a decent bashing but IMO they're still pretty decent. My OH and I had three JFK-LHR-JFK trips last summer, all booked in Club World. She had never flown BA before and I was a little apprehensive but she thought it was really rather good. If you get the better seats upstairs (on the 747) as we did on all flights it's great. The lounges at JFK (although the First Lounge is a bit s**t) and LHR are very good and if you get decent cabin crew, as we did then it's still a very enjoyable way to fly.

 

Unsurprisingly Club World doesn't look as good as it did 10yrs ago because from a seating perspective everyone else has caught up and in many cases passed them. If you're smart about which seats to pick then that can be mitigated hugely.

We sat in 10E/F ...

Really glad that you enjoyed the flight! It's such a nice change to hear from someone who's had a good experience in the midst of all the constant noise about flying being such a pain.

 

Can you reassure everyone that flying backwards is no big deal? There are so many people here who seem to be extremely apprehensive about that, which always seems strange to me because I got over the novelty in about 10 minutes on my first Club World flight and now barely notice which way I'm flying. (In fact, once I woke up in the middle of the night and was positively disorientated in the cabin because I couldn't work out which way round the aircraft was. fbgd will understand it if I add that it was a 777.)

Really glad that you enjoyed the flight! It's such a nice change to hear from someone who's had a good experience in the midst of all the constant noise about flying being such a pain.

 

Can you reassure everyone that flying backwards is no big deal? There are so many people here who seem to be extremely apprehensive about that, which always seems strange to me because I got over the novelty in about 10 minutes on my first Club World flight and now barely notice which way I'm flying. (In fact, once I woke up in the middle of the night and was positively disorientated in the cabin because I couldn't work out which way round the aircraft was. fbgd will understand it if I add that it was a 777.)

I'm actually looking forward to flying / sleeping head-first when the seat is "flat". Not too thrilled about climbing over someone else's legs! We are flying, using points, DFW-LHR in a 747-400 -- no seats available upstairs when we booked.

Can you reassure everyone that flying backwards is no big deal?

 

I used to love doing that on Southwest's old planes. The only down side was that they didn't recline.

We flew back from a TA in First on BA using AA miles and had a similarly comfortable experience. Six passengers in the cabin with 3 stewards. The only issue is the fuel surcharge from BA.

 

We try to opt for Iberia if we are going TA. They have a combined Business/First though it resembles First more than Business in all respects. I could lie flat and still had a foot of space between me and the next seat. In addition, the food was wonderful and never stopped. Best of all, no additional fuel charges.

fbgd will understand it if I add that it was a 777.)

 

Indeed, CW on the 777 is the Flying Youth Hostel. :D