August 10, 2004

Viable alternatives to Heathrow and BA

  1. Birmingham to Paris, then onto Jo'burg, on Air France
  2. Birmingham to Amsterdam, then onto Jo'burg, on KLM
  3. Birmingham to Zurich, then onto Jo'burg, on Swiss
  4. Birmingham to Dubai, then onto Jo'burg, on Emirates

...as you can guess from this, today we had the usual horrific experience at the hands of BA and Heathrow Airport. It just gets worse every year. The seats are now so cramped and thin that you can feel every move that the passenger behind makes – his knees in your back. And now they've moved to flights to Terminal 1! Grrrrrr! Plus a coach journey and a train journey (no seats on the way out). This morning I vowed never to do it again. This afternoon I was in a more sensible mood. As someone recently pointed out to me, getting to Heathrow from Coventry takes so long that we might as well fly from Birmingham to a different major European hub.


Robert O'Toole : 10 Aug 2004 18:46 |  Comments (5) |  Report a problem

- 5 comments by 3 or more people Not publicly viewable

  1. Steven Carpenter

    I’m wondering what our flight to Rome will be like from Coventry on Thursday with ThomsonFly – at least the flight will be direct (and much shorter than yours), except we’ll have a wriggly 15-month old to contend with!

    10 Aug 2004, 20:09

  2. Robert O'Toole

    You should wave as you fly over Kenilworth, we can see the Thomson planes from our house.

    12 Aug 2004, 07:40

  3. Just a tip (stating the obvious really) make sure nothing valuable is in your lugagge. The last time I flew through Birmingham I had all my money stolen from my luggage, and my car keys were moved into a different pocket in my holdall. Of course it could have happened at the Amsterdam end and you can get lightfingered baggage handlers at any airport, but B’ham is my only experience of this happening.

    13 Aug 2004, 12:03

  4. I have also tried out ‘avoid heathrow at all costs’ routes – in my case to Sydney.
    The best experiences were from Norwich (I did live there at the time!) to Amsterdam then KLM onwards.
    The Birimingham to Charles de Gaulle to Sydney by BA route was horrible. CdG most vile airport, expecially after 8:00 pm. On return to Birimingham more than 50% of hold lauggage had failed to arrive. Apparently “fairly normal from CdG”. My case was delivered by courier the next day from Birimingham – which was good….
    (Or we could stay home and save the planet….)

    19 Aug 2004, 11:21

  5. Robert O'Toole

    Thanks for the warning! Travelling via Bruxelles seems to have the same consequence. We spent a night and a day in Casablanca with no luggage thanks to Sabena (which some people claim stands for “Such a bloody experience, never again”).

    Perhaps the answer is to adopt the technique used by most travellers on continental flights through Jo’burg. Pack everything into a big (and i mean suitcase sized) flight bag, and then claim that it hand luggage. They all get away with it as well. The baggage holds must be empty, thus confusing the pilots as to the weight balance of the aircraft.

    19 Aug 2004, 11:32

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