#anyways i got starbucks breakfast for my long shift today and its tasty

[catbleps]

At this point (in AZ) Starbucks breakfast is cheaper McDonalds. Girl what

[billinghamn]

2017 Nov - Phoenix TP Run: Day 5 - Mon 27 Nov 2017 - London Heathrow to Helsinki

I reached the Arrivals hall and then proceeded straight down to Flight Connection buses so I could head over to T3. I timed it beautifully. A bus was waiting for me, and I ended up being the only passenger on it!

Through Fast Track Security in no time, and in to the Cathay Pacific Lounge for a shower. I noted that the Qantas Lounge was still not ready!

The Cathay Pacific shower suite was excellent. It was an example for BA to follow. There was proper tiling everywhere, and it felt really swish and substantial.

After my shower, which was very refreshing, I secured my favourite seat in the First Lounge section and then wandered over to the BA First Lounge to do my photo upload and tumblr blog updates. The Cathay wifi restricts access to certain websites.

Whilst I was there, I started thinking about breakfast! So I had to enjoy a small selection of bacon, sausages, hash browns and beans. Lovely.

Flight: AY1332 Equip: A350 Sched Depart: 10:20 Actual: 10:33 Sched Arrival: 15:15 Actual: 15:14 Takeoff: 10:47 Landing: 15:07

Headed down to Gate 7 and there was a fair number of passengers heading in the same direction. Luckily the vast majority of them were in the economy queue, and I strolled in through the business lane. Got some questions about where I was going, how long I was staying for. The Spanish Inquisition seems to be more evident across airlines now – not just US airlines.

Gate 7 is one of those gates organised to support larger aircraft like the A350 and A380. There are two doors on to two different air bridges. Quite often they hook both up the aircraft and therefore both doors are used to feed passengers on. For Gate 7, Door B normally feeds business passengers on through aircraft door 1L; Door A normally feeds economy passengers on through aircraft door 2L. This time it was obvious they had only hooked up aircraft door 2L to an airbridge. Aircraft door 1L was closed.

What was interesting was the distribution of passengers crowding around the two doors. It was clear that there were some regular business travellers who queued around door B. I hung around Door A, which is the door that all of the despatch team and flight attendants were using. Anyway, I was fairly happy to see them invite passengers to board through Door A!

On in to seat 2L. The A350 seat was nice and comfortable - great that there was power to the seat(!). We pushed back a few mins late, but we made that time up en route.

Got on the internet once we were up in the sky. I checked a few BA bookings to make sure they were all in order, which they were. By the time I had done that, I had a bottle of champagne in front of me, and lunch was on its way.

Lunch was a typical Finnair meal – this time I opted for beef, which came with mash and cabbage and a gravy. Not desperately hot to be honest, but fairly tasty. The beef was fairly tough though.

Was provided another bottle of champers with my lunch. I decided I needed to be careful now. I might be logging on later on, even though I haven’t declared that I would be working today.

Arrived in to Gate 55 which is (currently) the furthest gate from the terminal exit point. They opened both doors (1L and 2L) at the same time, and we were off fairly sharpish. Through Arrivals and Customs, briefly stopping off at Starbucks in Arrivals, before heading to the Hilton to check in.

Heidi wasn’t on shift, so another young lady offered me a double upgrade, suggesting another corner room (330) was an executive room with a sauna. Room 330 is identical to the previous rooms I have stayed in, except for it being on the other side of the building. However, the problem I quickly found was that the wifi was awful over there. I took my laptop over to room 302 where I confirmed the wifi worked fine. So I rang reception and asked them to move me back to room 302!

I caught up with work email etc, and then popped in to the Exec Lounge for snacks and a few drinks. The Exec Lounge was nice, but fairly small. The food was quite tasty - the beer was decent as well, including a local brew.

I didn't stay that long in the lounge - long enough to experience the food, and to pick up a couple of beers.