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What is the British Airways lockdown lounge menu?

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British Airways reopened its Galleries Club North lounge in Heathrow Terminal 5 yesterday, after seemingly acknowledging that there was no legal basis for keeping it closed.

The good news is that status and premium customers do now have somewhere to sit.

British Airways lockdown lounge menu

The bad news is that it is not a food and drink extravaganza. According to a post on Flyertalk yesterday, the food offering consists of a ‘help yourself’ selection of:

Sandwiches:
Tuna and lemon mayonnaise
Cheese Ploughman
Chicken and bacon

Soup:
Tomato and red pepper (in a takeaway container)

Crisps:
Cheese and onion
Sea salt

Muffins:
Blueberry or chocolate

Oddly, there is a fairly full drinks menu available from the bar. If you want to mix your tuna sandwich with rum, tequila, brandy, whisky or vodka, you can.

For clarity, you can eat the food in the lounge – there is no obligation to sit outside in the terminal as some people had assumed would happen.

Lufthansa also continues to offer a ‘served at your seat’ or assisted buffet in its Terminal 2 lounge.

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British Airways and Avios

Comments (35)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Crafty says:
    17 Nov17 November 06:30

    Has chat been killed off, or are you having a lie in? 🙂

  • MD says:
    17 Nov17 November 07:47

    Still waiting for the annual August Hsbc premier to Avios transfer bonus. Maybe next year?

  • Andrew says:
    17 Nov17 November 08:38

    HfP Scrolling is very juddery on Android this morning when the adverts (Amex and “Make $900 a day!”) are on screen.

  • Archie says:
    17 Nov17 November 09:04

    What is it about the author’s sneery comments about alcohol in lounges? Fair enough that the author has more interest in the flavour of the sandwiches than the quality and range of drinks, but why the need to always write in such a condescending way? Always waiting for it when there’s an article on a lounge. Shame as hfp is such a great site and the first thing I read from my morning mailbox.

    • Rhys says:
      17 Nov17 November 09:07

      ….I think Rob’s point is that the food menu is out of step with the drinks menu, which is more substantial…

    • TGLoyalty says:
      17 Nov17 November 10:21

      The point is they reduced the service even though there is absolutely no need to.

  • Aston100 says:
    17 Nov17 November 09:26

    Other than the USA, which other countries can sustain multiple full service carriers?

    • Rhys says:
      17 Nov17 November 09:41

      Japan? China?

    • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
      17 Nov17 November 11:34

      UAE, maybe

      • Aston100 says:
        17 Nov17 November 11:59

        I think the UAE’s circumstances are a bit different.
        Their airlines seem to use the country as purely a connection point to link 2 other places in the world.
        I don’t think the local population itself alone would create enough demand for more than one airline.

    • mr_jetlag says:
      17 Nov17 November 11:48

      The UK could, and did, support two (BEA and BOAC).

    • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
      17 Nov17 November 12:37

      Few more to the list

      Russia: Aeroflot and S7
      Taiwan: China Airlines and EVA
      Thailand: Thai and (maybe – too regional perhaps) Bangkok

    • Lady London says:
      17 Nov17 November 13:43

      Hopefully, Oz.
      Someone’s got to keep QF’s amazing ripoff pricing under control.

      • David D says:
        17 Nov17 November 17:34

        I think Virgin Australia when it comes back to the fore will be a much more low cost version when compared to its previous offering in-between QF and JQ. Though this will place a heavy price pressure on Qantas to ensure those who like Virgin Australia from the previous incarnation don’t remain with it.

        The main concern with Virgin Australia is will it do any long-haul flights in the future?

    • Andrew says:
      17 Nov17 November 13:51

      Canada?

      Air Canada
      Westjet

    • Dubious says:
      17 Nov17 November 16:16

      I suppose it depends how you define ‘full service’, but off the top of my head I’ll add: Brazil, Bhutan, Hong Kong (AHK is full service right?),

  • Dr C says:
    17 Nov17 November 15:07

    Can’t believe the ridiculousness of what they are having to now do with the lounge offering, I can’t see what was wrong with their app ordering and bringing to the table, its not like there were many customer interactions, its a load of rubbish now!

    • Lady London says:
      17 Nov17 November 17:24

      Do you remember “the universal answer [to any question] is 42”, as in ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ ?

      Well, the universal answer to any question about British Airways is “cost-cutting”.

  • Mikeact says:
    17 Nov17 November 16:53

    The problem I have with KrisFlyer is their archaic rule of 3 year expiry. Any points you have earned over 3 years are immediately deleted. I still have enough for a reasonable trip but this year hasn’t helped, but at least they have extended them out by 6 months , so unless they extend again I guess they will start taking miles away at the 3.6 year point.

    • BuildTheWall says:
      17 Nov17 November 17:23

      You can book up to one year in advance. That gives you effectively 4 years time to plan a trip. You can use those miles to book most star alliance and other partner airlines too. If you are unable to plan something for 4 years across 20 airlines’ routes, not sure you can complain much.

      • Bagoly says:
        17 Nov17 November 17:47

        But if each year you only earn 20% of what you need for said trip…

        • Froggee says:
          17 Nov17 November 18:56

          My problem is I transferred a bunch of credit card points for 4x one way J tickets from Singapore to Tokyo for the Olympics. I’ve got my KrisFlyer miles back but they will be due to expire in less than 2 years and I have no real use for them now. I could book a trip for myself just for the sake of it but the Mrs wouldn’t be happy! I thought I got a bargain with the miles but cash would have been better for once.

          • meta says:
            17 Nov17 November 21:03

            @Forgee I had a similar problem. In Nov 2018, I started transferring from Amex to book 2 F tickets for April 2020. Obviously the flights got cancelled. Unlike you, I went about it differently. I asked SQ to retain the value of miles and taxes which allowed me to rebook until end of March 2021. I rebooked in September for April 2021.

            Another issue is that there is no F availability on Singapore Airlines until October 2021 as they pulled all inventory.

            I am still hoping that I’ll be ok for April and they’ll fly F, but I wouldn’t be transferring to Krisflyer again unless I can fly and redeem immediately. It’s too risky and even 4 years is too short of a window as the world can go into shutdown pretty quickly as we have seen.

    • Harry T says:
      17 Nov17 November 22:38

      The only time I’ve transferred to KrisFlyer was for immediately redeeming on a LHR to Darwin flight when it was still 95,000 miles one way. I wouldn’t speculatively transfer across. They won’t be flying any F for a long time too.

      • meta says:
        18 Nov18 November 01:25

        They are retrofitting right now all of the remaining A380 with new Suites, so they are expecting them to remain in the fleet. The fact they haven’t cancelled anyone’s F/Suites ticket for next year might also mean it will come back quicker. We’ll see.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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