Globaliser

If you do this, then don't forget that BA has one of the more generous cabin baggage allowances around. In particular, the weight limit is almost theoretical. Each piece can weigh up to 23 kg (although you must be able to lift it into the overhead locker by yourself and the cabin crew are not allowed to do this for you), and it's actually very difficult to pack that much weight into the allowed size. I'm still not sure why you've ruled out changing the LHR-BCN flight to a later one to allow yourself a decent margin and then avoid the stress of trying to squeeze everything in to a small bag. That would seem like the obvious solution, given the length of your trip.

The experience you had on the way to Edinburgh was nothing to do with the second flight being domestic. I strongly suspect it was because you had booked two separate tickets. If you had booked a through ticket, the bag would have been automatically transferred, and you would have connected at Heathrow via the normal flight connections route. That would have involved you clearing immigration and security at Heathrow, but without having to get your bag. As you have booked two separate BA tickets for the trip to Barcelona, at Heathrow you will have to clear immigration, collect your bag, clear customs, and then go to check in the bag again before clearing security - just like last time. If you DIY some money-saving ideas, you really need to have worked out all the consequences first. Because of the way that you have booked it, the London-Barcelona flight (which is, by the way, also international) is a completely separate journey from your Houston-London flight from the airline's point of view. That's why you will be held to the terms of the fares you have bought. It'll probably be less stress if you just pay up to change the London-Barcelona flight rather than trying to wing a freebie out of the airline.

The oneworld website suggests that it's probably the Joan Miro: https://www.oneworld.com/airport-lounges?location=BCN

So far as London taxis are concerned (proper licensed taxis aka "black cabs", as opposed to private hire cars aka "minicabs" which include Ubers), they are now required to accept card payment. In the usual way for businesses that like tips, cabbies' card machines are set up to allow you to add on a tip amount easily before you pay. I have mentioned before the recent (and not uncommon) phenomenon of black cabs' "negative tips" - drivers who insist on taking less money than is actually showing on the meter. That makes the whole tipping question redundant anyway.

You will find that much tipping (eg restaurants) can be done on the card anyway, so you don't need cash for it. Since the pandemic started, I'm often not using any cash at all for many months on end - and I often don't carry any cash with me. It's harder to find a place that won't take cards than it is to find a place that won't take cash - there are very many places that are now completely cashless. I agree that £20 is all you need for starters. £100 is wild overkill, and you will find yourself either taking the bulk of it home, or having to manufacture excuses to spend it.

To add one detail to what FlyerTalker says, this will very probably be because the negotiated rate to the cruise line allows one-way tickets at the same discount levels as normally available only to the public for round-trip tickets. Think of it as being able to buy half a $600 round-trip ticket. The airline is probably not prepared to sell cheapie one-way tickets to the public (which is the usual situation), hence the public-facing price its website is offering.

So what? I don't think that there is a single mode of public transport that does not work on the basis that schedules published a long time in advance are subject to cancellation or change. No mode of scheduled public transport contractually promises to operate its published schedule, and all modes do accordingly cancel and change their published schedules. There are two big flaws with this theory. Slots are valuable, and airlines lose them if they're not actually operated. The first big flaw in your theory is that airline schedules that depend on slots tend not to be cancelled or changed so much. Airlines will sometimes even operate flights at a loss to ensure that they keep the slots. If airlines were doing what you accuse them of (deliberately over-scheduling flights in advance and then routinely cancelling them), they would lose their slots and competitors would be able to grab those slots instead. So if there were any truth in your theory, the airlines doing this would be engaging in a monumental act of self-harm. The other big flaw is that the schedules that do not depend on slots, and are therefore more likely to be cancelled or changed, therefore do not stop other airlines from scheduling competing flights anyway. So if one airline schedules too many flights at these airports, there's nothing to stop any other airline from increasing its schedules if it thinks it can clean up when the first airline cancels some of its flights. You have more of a point about gates. There's a distinct (although not exclusively) US practice of leasing gates to specific airlines so that other airlines can't use them. However, although airlines are keen to make sure competitors don't get hold of their slots, I've never heard it seriously suggested that airlines hog gate space to keep out competitors.

Safety is everyone's business. Many other airline employees (including cabin crew and ground staff) have critical safety responsibilities that pilots can't check, so that they have to rely on the others employees to do their jobs properly.

If you are still looking, one idea may be to use the search engines on some of the online cruise travel agency sites. We're not allowed to mention specific agents here, but if you explore different ones online you will find that some of them have search engines that allow you to be fairly specific about where you want to go, including nominating ports of call you want to call at (or avoid). These search engines can be a very good research tool.

And they charge a fee, even to UK bank card holders.

For anyone who needs it, the link for the London story is https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/22/travel/things-to-do-london.html

I hope it wasn't that reputable foreign carrier called Lufthansa? It has just cancelled 34,000 flights from its summer schedule. What you're seeing is not a US airline problem. It's a worldwide airline industry problem. Don't be blinded by a "Why was it me who got inconvenienced?" perspective.

In the UK, it's harder to find a place that won't accept a card than a place that won't accept cash. Many of us routinely don't carry cash any more. In London, even vans and market stalls will almost universally accept cards. Even buskers (street musicians) often have contactless card terminals because so many people don't carry cash!

This is rather a Mark Twain story. Even some announced retirement plans have been reversed. For example, see https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2022/06/28/airbus-a380-shocker-lufthansa-brings-back-permanently-decommissioned-jumbo-jets/ (just a couple of months after this apparently-terminal reiteration: https://airwaysmag.com/lufthansa-close-a380-chapter/). They are not necessarily uneconomical. If you fill an A380, costs per passenger are very competitive. The A380's problems are that (a) you need a lot of passengers to fill them, so this works best on thick routes terminating at slot-constrained airports; and (b) it has little belly capacity for cargo, so you basically have to fill them with passengers - unlike some other aircraft (eg the 777-300ER) that can carry a large amount of profitable cargo even if the passenger load is relatively low.

For anyone who sees this and does think about taking the route (which is very efficient but less interesting, as gumshoe958 says), the change from DLR to Elizabeth Line is best done at West India Quay DLR --> Canary Wharf Elizabeth Line. It's a much longer walk if you get off at Canary Wharf DLR.

It was. You were entering the UK, not transferring to a non-UK destination. Big difference. No. On a through ticket on BA from Houston via Heathrow to Edinburgh, there's no need to claim bags at Heathrow. You clear immigration, and then you clear security. But you never go landside and the bags go straight through. Once upon a time, they were put on a special belt at Edinburgh so that they could clear customs there (although the passenger does not need to clear immigration at Edinburgh) - but from what fruitmachine says that may have changed. The only reasons I can think of for why someone might be told they have to claim and re-check their bag are (a) they were flying on two separate tickets so the bag could not be through-checked; or (b) the agent at Houston didn't know what they were doing.

It's half a mile from to Victoria coach station to Victoria Tube. Frankly, I wouldn't walk this with luggage. Neither do I understand why the coach is "just the way to go". Of all the public transport options, it would usually be near the bottom of my list of options except in specific circumstances. If you do take the coach, you'd probably be best to get a taxi to St Pancras. Alternatively, take the train from Southampton to Waterloo and take a taxi from Waterloo to St Pancras. Easiest: taxi (or pre-booked car/"minicab" service). Are you moving hotels in the middle of your London stay?

On a quick search, it looks like the OP will actually be sailing to Dover. Like Southampton, it's not London (and cruise lines should IMO be made to stop misleading customers like this) - but that Southampton thread probably won't help with transport.

Understand but remember you have to add time to get to Heathrow Express from your hotel. The Heathrow Express doesn't really start in central London, so far as most tourists are concerned. Where exactly is the hotel? There are other rail options that could make sense: both the Underground and the Elizabeth Line may potentially work, but again much depends on your personal circumstances and exactly what journey you're going to be making. A road journey from (true) central London to Heathrow in the morning peak is unlikely to be that difficult, as most of it will be in the opposite direction from the heaviest traffic.

The trains to Southampton are basically commuter trains. The proportion of train passengers who are going to/from a cruise is tiny. Luggage racks would be an utter waste of space, particularly on trains which can be absolutely packed with people at peak hours - but this isn't a problem for anyone going to start a cruise, for whom there is plenty of space for luggage, just not in dedicated luggage racks. Is this fixed in stone, or could you still change your plans? The Heathrow Express is expensive, and Paddington is not really in central London, so you would find it frustrating if you're sightseeing over several days. Lots more advice available in the British Isles forum - a link has already been posted above.

Buying one-way long-haul tickets is usually very expensive, so the first thing is to check whether this is what you've been trying to price. There should be no need for this. A Florida-London // Berlin-Florida open-jaw ticket should basically be priced as half of a Florida-London-Florida round-trip ticket plus half of a Florida-Berlin-Florida round-trip ticket. If an open-jaw ticket is what you've been looking for, then that suggests that Florida-Berlin-Florida tickets are significantly more expensive than Florida-London-Florida tickets. In that case, you may want to think about a USA-London-USA round-trip ticket, plus a London-Berlin-London round-trip ticket. They'll be two separate tickets, so if you fly Berlin-London-USA you'll need to be aware of the pitfalls and risks of transferring between two separate tickets, but overall it should be reasonably straightforward.

The flights that match the description are TP262 YYZ-LIS and TP1036 LIS-BCN. The latter is currently planned to operate with an E190. The former flight's seat map shows the following, including 5F currently taken. This matches this layout - https://www.aerolopa.com/tp-32q-lr - which is an LR. Seat Map Search: Departing YYZ on 10/11/23 for LIS Flying TP flight 262 in Business, Economy A B C D E F 1 X P X P 2 P P 3 P P P - 4 P P 5 P P P - A B C D E F Seats Premium Only P Available + Handicap-Accessible H Paid & Premium # Occupied - Blocked X Lavatory L Paid $ Location Exit Row E Wing W Upper Deck U

https://www.aerolopa.com/tp-airbus-a321-gallery is probably the best single source. She should look at the seat map for her flight, and then work out which of these configurations she's on.

A lot depends on your levels of fitness and enthusiasm - but however fit and enthusiastic you are, I doubt that the Bakerloo Line will work well. On the basis that luggage means that you'd want a step-free route if you take the Tube, the nearest stations are Westminster (~500-metre walk) or Waterloo Jubilee Line (~700-metre walk). If that works for you, the obvious options are: Piccadilly Line to Barons Court (or Hammersmith in the morning peak or inclement weather), cross-platform change, District Line to Westminster; Piccadilly Line to Green Park, change to the Jubilee Line to either Westminster or Waterloo; Elizabeth Line to Bond Street, change to the Jubilee Line. There is a step-free route at Green Park by taking a lift (elevator) up, a long walk, and then a lift down. You can also do this change by using the escalator up to ticket hall level and then immediately going down the escalators to the Jubilee Line (without going through the ticket gates) - this involves less walking. But managing big luggage on an escalator requires some care. Bond Street will have a lift route too. Using the Elizabeth Line to leave Heathrow will cost more than using the Piccadilly Line.

There's no way you're getting from Paddington station to the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge in 15 minutes, even at 3.00 am!