British Airways - Club Europe

As you may have seen in an earlier post. Recently we travelled to Edinburgh and decided that instead of painting ourselves Orange to mingle with Easy Jet peoples, we would go forth and fly with BA.  We opted for Club Europe mostly for the lounge access, but also because you get Food and drink on the plane, priority boarding, better seating, more luggage allowance and the chance to throw a potato at the pilot should he not be very good.

Whilst you contemplate which kind of potato check out the below for a time lapse of London Gatwick Runway (Not filmed by a Drone)

London Gatwick lounge access is very good, but I have to be honest and say it is not as good as at London Heathrow. There is a much better selection at Heathrow. None the less the ability to have food and drink and not sit on a chair made of nails out in the standard departures area is a good thing!

View from the lounge

BACON

Boarding the BA A320 was fine.  We were in row 2 and when it came to choosing between a cold meat selection and an English breakfast the choice was obvious. More Bacon please!!  Then it came to the people in row 3 to have a choice and they were told they'd run out of English Breakfast, and only had 1 cold meat selection. They did not appear amused, and when pushed were offered a bacon sandwich! It would appear on these very short flights that BA only stock 3 of each option. Considering you could have 12 people sat in Club Europe - you could have some very upset and hungry people. Funnily enough on the return journey it was the same.  The random choice of a Salmon salad at 9pm at night was not the favoured choice, but they only had 3 of the alternative mushroom, vegetarian, olives, shaken up in a bag and served in a dish option.

The landing however was text book and there was no requirement for throwing of the aforementioned potatoes

On the return journey however, things were not well.  An announcement was made informing passengers that all the lockers on the A320 heading back to London were broken and basically insisted all passengers check in their hand luggage to go into the hold.  Stupidly we believed this to be true and begrudgingly checked in our hand luggage. Not many other people had done so and the crew were getting increasingly agitated at this fact. One lady who must have had a hard time holding up her face due to the layers of face paid on, looked really angry and marched up and down looking for victims. She made a few people hand in their possessions but other members of the crew seemed to be avoiding the issue and even on large wheelie bags (the sort of size a small man could fit into) they let them off and said it would be OK.

Upon getting on the aircraft we watched our bag sit in the pouring rain before being loaded into the hold, surrounded by a max of 20 bags. A member of the cabin crew then was overheard saying that only 3 overhead lockers were broken, but this then transpired to only be 1.  So in fact there was no requirement to panic people quite so much and make such a big deal out of this.  Not sure exactly who had ordered the panic, but the customer service and communication skills, and consistency in their approach was not great.

So in conclusion, is Club Europe on very short flights really worth it?  If you like getting drunk at 6am in a comfy chair whilst waiting for the plane then yes. If you want to get a slap up meal of your choice on board  - then no. Make a visit to Burger King before hand and sit down and shut up.