British Airways Club Europe A320 Kraków to London
10 Days – England, Scotland, and Iceland – Introduction
British Airways 873
Kraków (KRK) – London-Heathrow (LHR)
Airbus A320
20 July 2015
British Airways Club Europe A320, to sum it up: awesome flight, amazing service, and maybe too much champagne 🙂 . I believe the last time that I flew with oneworld or British Airways was about thirteen years ago… Having travelled almost exclusively with the Star Alliance in the past decade made me feel somewhat ‘bad’ for abandoning them this time… however I just had too many oneworld points and miles that I had to use them up otherwise they would expire soon.
British Airways recently re-introduced the Kraków to London flight and therefore I thought it would be a perfect idea to redeem 15k Avios each for Club Europe (Business Class) on the flight to London and then add a free domestic UK flight later in the trip.
Boarding was announced in the lounge about thirty minutes before scheduled departure time. I was surprised that there were actually two queues for boarding – regular Economy and oneworld Priority! That’s something you normally don’t see at small airports. We were then driven to the A320 by bus.
I was excited that we got an aircraft with the new slimline seats! Kraków gets the slimline seats about 60% of the time (I could tell by tracking the previous flights’ aircraft). I was able to assign seats in row 1 in advance since I’m oneworld Sapphire, so we had seats 1A and 1C, I took the window seat. The crew was super friendly and welcomed us onboard as soon as we took our seats.
Intra-European Business Class (Club Europe) on British Airways isn’t any different from any other European carriers. You get all of the ground benefits (apart from free seat selection) and the onboard product is basically an Economy seat in the first few rows of the cabin with the middle seat blocked, and better food/drink service.
I hope Lufthansa wasn’t too mad that I didn’t fly with them or the Star Alliance… it is just that it was super convenient to fly directly to London and NOT have to spend any of my precious Star Alliance miles on anything.
Boarding was completed about five minutes before scheduled departure time at which point the flight attendants passed out hot towels to everyone in Club Europe. Business Class consisted of five rows, with every seat being full.
We made it to the runway shortly after pushback and were airborne about five minutes behind schedule. The captain informed us of our two hour flight to ‘London Heathrow Terminal 5’ which would put us in ahead of schedule.
Once we reached 10k feet, the crew began to prepare the meal service for both cabins. The video monitors were also lowered and the airshow was displayed. I really wish that Lufthansa had video monitors on short-haul flights… I really like the airshow map!
The lunch service began firstly with packaged nuts and a choice of two drinks. We opted for champagne and water.
The champagne was Heidsieck Monopole Blue Top Brut, which was fine for a short flight. The flight attendant who served us food and drinks was amazing, she genuinely cared about us and constantly looked after us to make sure we were satisfied, excellent service!
I like that the cabin had actual ‘photos’ and frames in a couple of places… including the lavatory!
The lunch menu was made up of two options: Chicken with a salad or Lobster with a salad. I had the chicken and it was excellent and perhaps the best chicken I’ve ever eaten in the sky. The lunch came with bread and some sort of pudding.
I find it a bit odd that we had to wait until the meal service was over to get tea and coffee. I like to have my tea whilst I’m eating and therefore I just found it strange that they didn’t have any until after. Cold drinks were available all the time and therefore we had more champagne and wine along with our lunch.
Either something was broken or the seat just didn’t want to recline… It took quite a bit of force to make the seat recline and it only did by about 1cm..
We started the descend into London about twenty minutes before landing and were informed that there was a ton of traffic into Heathrow and we would have to circle twice above London before we could land.
We finally landed, about five minutes behind scheduled time and made it to the gate about seven minutes after landing.
Here’s a picture that indicates that we may or may not had a bit too much fun (and too much champagne):
Basically the flight attendant that you see with us in the photo above was beyond excellent. She was amazing and by far one of the best flight attendants ever. She constantly asked us how we were doing and refilled our drinks quite frequently. She would give us more champagne when we finished the previous one and would constantly smile and laugh. Excellent service, British Airways! Everything about the flight was also super awesome in that the food was fresh, the drinks were good, and the crew was superb. I will remember the flight as one of my most memorable ones and I’m glad that I was able to redeem Avios for the flight. I definitely won’t hesitate to fly with British Airways in the future.. the flight was awesome and perhaps an amazing introduction to oneworld!
