In Transit at Heathrow

By Lee | August 16th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

I am currently in the British Airways lounge in terminal 4 at Heathrow Airport. I arrived at 6:10am this morning and have been in London all day because my flight to Baku isn’t until 9:05pm tonight. Crazy layover but thankfully my good friend Morroni has a flat here in East Central London so I went to his place and basically just slept all day while he slaved away at work. He left work early and we hit my favorite London spot, Pizza Express for a quick bite before I jumped on the Heathrow Express back to the most hectic and disorganized airport on Earth. However, the British certainly do one thing right and that’s these airport lounges.

British Airways and most International Airlines, meaning non US ailines, have great lounges for their upper tier customers and first class ticket holders. As a American platinum passenger, I get complimentary access to all BA lounges and they are stocked with everything and it’s all free.

You can have all types of food and drinks. Even the alcoholic drinks are free here and you can make it yourself. I don’t like to drink before flights but there certainly are a lot of people who do as I watch them guzzling back their own conconctions. Imagine seeing that in the States, forget about it, it would never happen. I just got finished wolfing down a bunch of Kiwi fruits, some dinner meats, assorted veggies and trendy British bottled water all for free. Is that a great deal or what?

I actually used to pay $350 for my yearly membership in the American Airlines Admirals Club, where the ammenities are really nothing. The only thing you get is free water and soda and the occasional bowl of pretzels that everyone puts their same grubby hands in. I will never be doing that again.

I gotta go catch my flight to Baku and I am really excited to get this trip started. I will be posting as often as I can assuming the availability of Internet cafes because I don’t travel with a laptop. Hopefully my jetlag will not be too bad in the morning and I can hit the ground running in the oil rich Caspian Sea city of Baku.