ABZ - LGW - LIS - LHR - ABZ on BA and TAP

[chunk]

SO its Sunday 7th and time for my second trip to Lisbon in 3 weeks. The first trip I took the AF E90 from ABZ and connected to a standard Airbus 320, with the return on the A321 and E90 again. All these flights were fine, except that the snadwich they give you on the LIS leg is kinda pointless.....oh....and transferring from Terminal F to D basically involves leaving one terminal and entering the other as if you are checking in again. Wierd but I guess that is to do with Shengen.....

Anyway, not through choice, I had to come back via Heathrow to meet someone so my preferred KL or AF option wasn't on. BA and TAP it was. I would have preferred BMI and TAP for FF points reasons but it was 200 Euro more expensive. Strange for partners but there you go.

Sunday at 915 is a great time to be at ABZ as it is dead. I got through check in (they gave me both boarding passes) and security in 5 minutes and waited for the B734 that was taking me to LGW. It was a little late but no dramas. Boarded and took my seat at 14F....not used to being this far back! Flight was around 70% full which i thought was quite impressive for a Sunday morning. Other than that...not much of interest happened. They had a bar service and gave out a bag of nuts and raisins which were fairly disgusting. Then we seemed to circle Gatwick for about half an hour before landing...quite frustrating but I had plenty of time. I always remembered LGW North being OK to arrive at but it seems I am mistaken. It looks old and tatty with lots of broken escalators, stairs and narrow corridors.....very poor to be honest. How the hell to disabled people get around that place??

Went to South Terminal via the wee train thing but having got my BP in ABZ I went straight through to security. As usual got put in the only queue in which shoes had to be removed. Osama must be following thorugh into his frillies at the thought of such high-tech security systems. I mean, 8 queues and one randomly getting everyone to take their shoes off. If someone can exlain the point of that then please do. I can understand randomly selecting people but anyone could see that one queue was moving alot slower than any other....so it was easy to avoid. Bonkers.

Gatwick South has not changed much in years.....it is still (like T3 at D(H)eathrow - ie. shopping mall with attached gates. That said I had an OK lunch in Est Est Est and wandered about for a couple of hours. Got online through the hotspot and saw my TAP flight was half an hour late. The South terminal is pretty crappy overall with all the holiday flights meaning it is crazy busy. Half an hour past our boarding time, the Gate number for TAP finally appeared and off we trudged down yet another corridor. Boarding started another half hour later and I was in 16A on a A319. First imporessions....comfortable seat but legroom was shockingly bad. Holiday charter poor. It did appear quite new though and had the new livery outside. Crew seemed friendly enough and one in particular was pretty stunning.....though TAP seem to issue them all different uniforms and the same daft shoes! The an Angolan chap dripping in the most tasteless designer clothers and glasses sat in front of me, proceeding to push the seat back reducing my legroom to less than nothing. He must have enjoyed my knees in his back 'cos he didn't move until he was told to for take off. Why do people do that?? I know the guy was from Angola 'cos I saw his passport so I assume (having flown to London, unless he got a boat of course) he knew he couldnt put his seat back but did it anyway!!!! Who cares it is only 2 hours.....

Take off was ok but we again were held at a low altitude (ie about 3000 ft) for about 15 minutes before revving up and getting away properly. Service was OK, drinks and a sandwich of chorizo, mushrooms and cheese (wierd...) along with some diabetes inducing dessert cup, which was disgusting. They played some silent Just for Laughs type comedy programme on the screens which seemed to ammuse the dude sitting next to me as he creased up at something which wasn;t funny. Oh well. I carried on reading my Robert Fisk book on the Middle East. Recommended reading for everyone. Frightening at the same time as enlightening. Also listened to some new stuff on the Ipod - The Go! Team's proof of youth album, Heavy Trash's new one, Bluefinger by Black Francis and the new Foo's stuff. All good.

Before long we are flying over Lisbon on final decent and land about 40 minutes late. Bussed to terminal and then had to stand inthe immigration queue for way too long....why can we not just join Shengen and be done with this bollocks. Anyway, once through there and a bit of a wait....my bag was first off the carousel so to the taxi queue. Which in keeping with the day, was enormous! Ah well, only missed the first 20 minutes of the rugby Q/F...and we lost in the end anyway so.....

After 4 days work it was time to come back. I knew there was fog at Heathrow in the morning so prepared for the worst......

Got to LIS in good time and checked in quickly, through security at a speed London airports should aspire to and went for some Camarao for lunch. It was OK and then headed through Immigration to the gate. Boarding was again 30 minutes late and onto a bus. Then the problems began.....45 minutes on a packed un-airconditioned bus on a warm day, not going anywhere!!! It was dreadful and people were getting faint and angry. Finally we move to the plane and sit outside it for ten minutes. They then let us on.....boarding EVERYONE from the rear steps!! Why?? It was just wierd....

Got settled in the old liveried A319 in seat 10C and had a lot more legroom than last time....have to remember that. Crew on this flight were a lot friendlier than on the first and take off was one hour later than scheduled thanks to back ups at Heathrow as a result of the morning fog. After that, the flight took the same course as the one down, same service, same TV, same strange sandwich. All fine though and we land in T2 almost exactly one hour behind schedule. Still in plenty time to meet someone and get on the 2010 to ABZ on BA. Or so I thought.

Anyone been through the connections centre between T2 and the rest? Jesus. It was awful. Hundreds of Americans rightly pissed off becuase all the flights were delayed and they had missed their connections and it was so busy there were people queueing to get into the queue!!! It was ridiculous. Once finally in the queue, it took a further 1 hour to get to the security machines.....they have 6 machines in there and only 3 are working or manned. It is an absolute disgrace and when people are getting more and more tense seeing unmanned security machines is not helping your reputation as Europe's crappest airport. Finally I get though and trudge to T1 domestic departures. Now the 2010 to ABZ is apparently on time...but the boarding area is full of passengers from the 1800 which has not gone (and apparently didn't) til 2130. Of course our flight wasn;t on time but we should be greateul it was only 30 minutes late!

Took my seat at 19F and waited. Eventually pushed back around 2100 and took off shortly after. A nice flight with a tasty ham salad served landed at 2210, only 30 minutes late. You could see all the passengers at ABZ still waiting for the 1800 flight from LHR to land so they could fly down there....it didn;t leave til midnight so god knows whow they got into London......

All in all, BA are OK but they fly from the two crappest airports in the country, possibly Europe. BAA is a disgrace and perhaps things wouldnt be so bad if they spent money making security machines operational or even manning them, rather than taking up all available space on crappy shops that sell stuff at the same price as the high street. For that reason, BA are still of the radar for me unless really necessary. And their FF programme is crap.

TAP were fine and I would use them again but preferably from AMS or CDG if I could. LIS is not a very good aiport and is too small for all its activity but I understand that is a political dispute that Portugal has to resolve!

[sn26567]

Interesting report, chunk. Exactly what I expected to read from you about BA, BAA, LHR and LGW.

When I go to London I now fly to LCY: a heaven compared to all the other London airports. Unfortunately more and more people are aware of it and it will not be long before service will go down.

[chunk]

Yep - there used to be FlyBE (in the days it was called British European) service from ABZ to LCY and it was great. So much less hassle. But two problems....you can't connect very well beyond London from there and the flight didn;t last very long!

BA and BMI have London so stitched up that even EasyJet only go to Luton from ABZ. This is exactly why KLM and AF are cleaning up on the transfer passengers. KLM come to and from ABZ 4 times a day to Europe's best hub AMS (in my view!) and AF 3 times a day to a route network possibly bigger and better than BA - usually at a lower cost as well. Even CDG is better than LHR or LGW!

[Comet]

LCY is offering more routes now. Austrian will start soon to VIE and I read that AF are planning more routes. LCY is very easy to use, with quick luggage reclaim, quick passport control and easy access via the DLR into London. It's our airport of choice because we are not prepared to pay the extortionate "cheap" fares quoted by Brussels Airlines. It is about half the price to fly on VLM, which is full service, unlike Brussels Airlines.

[MSS658]

Nice report ! Never been trough LGW or LHR before (not willing to planning to directly )