Vienna to London Heathrow return in September 2015, both flights in Economy on an A320. Crew pleasant but not doing more than absolutely required. A snack and drinks were served on both legs. This time the sandwich consisted of a mini pastrami and cheese sandwich and a mini black currant bun. Edible, but not BA´s best sandwich offering. Additional drinks were served on request. Both legs featured the new slim seats in the cabin with reduced legroom. While the seat are slightly better than the Recaro slim seats, I miss the older more comfortable seats with better leg room. I did not really realize that BA has changed the rules recently and travelling only with hand baggage now also means that one is no longer allowed to pick a seat during check-in, but a seat is randomly allocated. Selecting any seat (even a middle seat in the back of plane now costs EUR 18). Also, if one later decides to check a piece of luggage the costs are a whopping EUR75 at the airport or EUR35 on line. The final fare with BA can be substantially higher than the initial price quote - the additional charges are displayed during the booking process and if one commits to checking luggage during the booking process, the charges are lower. With the exception of a free drink and sandwich, British Airways Economy product is now pretty much a low-cost airline product. Being Oneworld Sapphire does not help either. No privileges here; still the same charges for seat selection and checking luggage. While VIE-LHR was on time, the return LHR-VIE leg was delayed for one hour. After a timely boarding the full plane was waiting for the departure, but then the flight deck announced that they are waiting for some cargo to be loaded and they missed their assigned slot, which meant waiting an hour for a new slot. So, basically BA inconvenienced a whole plane of passengers to load some delayed cargo. Flying with hand baggage only, I used web check-in for both flights which worked fine. Boarding procedures were unremarkable and pleasant. BA uses a shared lounge in VIE. The Lounge as such is acceptable (small and mostly packed), but far from great with limited and lower quality offerings. The selection seems to be more or less the same in all lounges in VIE. BA Galleries Lounge in LHR T3 a comfortable oasis amid a busy airport and food and drinks selection was better than VIE. Wine selection was nice. BA still uses T3 for its flights to VIE, which I consider a huge benefit over using T5, which tends to be a mess for passengers. While I stopped flying British Airways Business in Europe they BA changed Business seating to Economy seats with no additional legroom, I see no valid reason to pay any surcharge for this product, but I still consider BA one of the better options for Economy flights in Europe. However their new low-cost airline concept also means that the times when I was willing to pay higher prices just for flying with BA over easyJet or Austrian on this route are unfortunately over.
A320 |
Business |
Economy Class |
VIE to LHR |
September 2015 |
12345 |
12345 |
Food & Beverages |
12345 |
12345 |
12345 |
yes |