9 hour wait for connecting flight – which Heathrow lounge(s) to visit ?
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Flying Edin to São Paulo via LHR on BA Club World on Thursday this week. Unfortunately due our 17.30 Edin flight being cancelled, the only other flight with Business availability was the 11.25 meaning we now face a 9 hour wait for our connecting flight.
Any advice/suggestions for which lounges to visit for lunch and evening meal ? Are we able to visit the T3 lounges and if so, do we remain airside or would we need to come back through security ? Thanks.
PS – The 14.15 flight would have been better but only had availability in economy. I explained to BA I would be happy sitting in a economy seat but I needed the extra baggage allowance and still wanted lounge access in Edin and was amazed that they couldn’t do it. Frightening how inflexible BA’s policies/systems are that they couldn’t arrange this, especially considering it’s them who messed up.
PPS – when we were notified of the 17.30 cancellation, the email said they had moved us to the NEXT available flight which didn’t land in LHR until 40 mins AFTER the São Paulo flight departed. The mind boggles. I honestly think if it wasn’t for the BA 241 voucher, I’d very likely be giving BA a wide berth.
You don’t say if you have status with BA so your choices as a Club passenger are the BA North and south Galleries Club lounges and the b satellite lounge. Is there a lounge at the c satellite? If you have Amex Plat you also have the plaza premium lounge.
Not sure if you want to leave the airport but I’d consider to go for a wander around Windsor instead.
Bronze at the moment. Will be silver after this trip though ! For lounge access I thought status is only relevant when travelling in economy ? I was hoping that flying in CW allowed lounge access to the T3 lounges (assuming we can get there and stay airside)
It is possible to go to T3 from T5 and access the lounges as a CLub passenger but I’ve never done it (the transfer airside between t5 & T3 and back again so I can’t advise on how to do that). But you need to be in possession of the Sao Paulo boarding passes to get back to T5.
Re Status if you’re Gold you’d also have access to the Galleries First lounge at T5 even as a Club World passenger. Hence my mentioning status.
Just to clarify, our Edin flight will land at T5 and our São Paulo flight will depart from T5. My question about the T3 lounges was to visit them and waste some time. Is that allowed even though our connecting flight doesn’t depart from T3 ?
I don’t know what passport you hold but I think I would be wandering into London for some sightseeing and a bite to eat. 9 hours in a lounge and I would be crawling up the walls.
Never tried it but I’d very surprised if you were allowed to transfer airside to T3 if your flight departs from T5.
You said at the start “Unfortunately due our 17.30 Edin flight being cancelled, the only other flight with Business availability was the 11.25 meaning we now face a 9 hour wait for our connecting flight.”
That doesn’t sound right if BA cancelled the flight. They should put you on the closest operating flight, allowing sufficient time for the connection and you’d be well within your rights (under EC261) to push for it.
Unless of course you want to sit in the lounge for 9 hours. Plenty of time to partake enjoy free* food and drink from BA (albeit I suspect you may be very bored of the limited food options at least well before that)
*Yes, I realise it isn’t actually free but I’m sure they don’t price in 9 hours worth…. 🙂
- This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .
I’d also note that when we had a redemption flight cancelled last year, we were given options online that not only allowed us to choose any other BA flight that day operating to the same destination (including from a different London airport), but we could have changed the date as well if we wanted to – by several days at least. All very easy, and very well handled.
Not sure if something has changed here but it sounds completely wrong to me. What would have happened if they’d had no redemption availability at all on that day?
Sometimes you have to push back hard on these things. Virgin cancelled one of our redemption flights a month or so ago, claiming it was a “schedule change” (it wasn’t, but they kept calling it that when I spoke to a reservations agent and I kept correcting them). Their email was so misleading I initially thought was a ~15 minute timing change and didn’t realise they’d moved us to the next day’s flight until several days later when I received notification of the change from Award Wallet.
By the time I’d finished we were flying again on our original date, a few hours later on a Delta Airlines direct service but they are clearly pulling all kinds of tricks to avoid their EC261 obligations and I wonder if BA is now doing the same.
Why on earth would you spend 9 hours in a Heathrow lounge when you are 15 minutes from one of the greatest cities in the world? We’ve had layovers like that in Zanzibar, Singapore and Dubai and made the made the most of them. Suck up the cost of Heathrow Express and go enjoy the Big Smoke. The food will be a zillion times better and you won’t have to look at miserable Gold card holders wishing things were like the old days.
I’ll get off my soap box 🙂
@masaccio is right – unless you want the fight, its worth considering what you could usefully do with the time. A couple of suggestions here with Windsor as well. The Great Park is good for a long walk if the weather is OK.… well, right except for one thing… You won’t have to look at the miserable Gold card holders anyway as they’ll all be in the First lounge. 😉
- This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .
I don’t know what passport you hold but I think I would be wandering into London for some sightseeing and a bite to eat. 9 hours in a lounge and I would be crawling up the walls.
I would happily spend 9 hours in the T3 lounge circuit. In fact I think I have in the past.
PPS – when we were notified of the 17.30 cancellation, the email said they had moved us to the NEXT available flight which didn’t land in LHR until 40 mins AFTER the São Paulo flight departed. The mind boggles. I honestly think if it wasn’t for the BA 241 voucher, I’d very likely be giving BA a wide berth.
I just wanted to explain what happenes when BA cancels a flight.
Once a flight is cancelled the BA Bots (to give them a name) simply look at the flight that has been cancelled and seeks to move you to an alternative but it ignores any connecting flights linked to that flight so yes at times it can mean for a short period that they expect you to still catch a flight that’s impossible for to catch either because it will have departed or you can’t meet the Minimum Connection Time.
Once that immediate rebooking has happened a further bot then goes and checks to see if anyone on the cancelled flight has a connection that no longer works and then seeks to remedy that issue. Now that could mean moving you to a later flight to your eventual destination (not always possible) or rebooking the connection to arrive earlier – hence why they put you on a much earlier flight to LHR because there isn’t a later flight to Sao Paulo.
Because of all the apps and internet access we now have people get immediatly notified about the first change before the whole itinerrary has been checked. That’s because for the vast, vast majority of people the rebookings are fine and cause no problems but it does mean that for a small number of people are puzzled about what they are supposed to do.
A couple of years ago I was due to fly DUB-LCY-JFK. The LCY-JFK was cancelled and the bot simply moved me to the LHR flight that was closest in departute time to the BA1 flight I was originally on. That meant I was flying DUB-LCY and arriving there at around the same time as the new LHR-JFK was due to depart leaving me somethign like 10 minutes to get between the two airports. A couple of days later the system caught up and rebooked my DUB-LCY to DUB-LHR.
This isn’t restricted to BA. Most airlines have similar systems to do this sort of work and they too will have some passengers like you who are initially expected to depart on one flight before they’ve arrived on another.
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