Holiday to Canada in Aug 2024: Day 11 – Toronto YYZ to London Heathrow LHR

At the airport, there was no need for fast track security since the main security was empty. As a result, we were through in a few minutes.

It’s a fair old way to the C Gates, and we found the Plaza Premium Lounge opposite Gate C32. BA outsourced their lounge at Toronto Pearson to a third party a few years ago.

Since we arrived at the lounge at 1:30pm, and the BA Lounge was not due to be opened until 3:30pm, we expected to be turned away.

Luckily, the lounge staff took pity on us and allowed us into the main lounge. They would let us know when we could head through to the BA lounge later on. That was a good result.

The main lounge was pretty decent. There was a good selection of seating and a good selection of food.

However, we both tried the crinkle cut chips, and they had clearly been out a long time. They were cold and woolly on the inside. Not pleasant.

That didn’t stand us in good stead for when the BA lounge opened. We had read a wide variety of reports that there would be table service; there was a buffet service; that the roast beef tasted like a Findus ready meal. We weren’t sure what we would find.

Irrespective, I queued up to get into the lounge at 15:30. The team was very polite and checked my boarding pass, and directed me to the silver/bronze section. I asked whether I could sit in the Gold/Emerald section, and she rechecked my boarding pass. I was in.

Vick had an extra problem. She was a min or so behind me. Her boarding card said she was Silver. I took pity on her and guested her in. Lucky girl…

We picked up a menu and were reasonably happy with what we found. We grabbed a table in the window.

To start with, Vick ordered the arrancini balls and I went for the beef sausage roll.

Oddly, they came warm but dry. There was no sauce with them. Vick ordered some ketchup. A little unusual.

Next, we both bordered the chicken, with roasted potatoes and green beans.

This was the complete opposite of the starters. There was a lovely jus with the chicken. The potatoes were lovely, and the beans were well seasoned.

The chicken was a delight. Overall, the waitress was lovely. Very meek and softly spoken, but very helpful.

We found some tasty puddings in the buffet section, which we couldn’t get access to. I asked our waitress, and with some embarrassment, she pulled out a drawer, which made those puddings accessible.

The puddings were very nice indeed. There was no need for dinner on board the flight back to London now.

We left from Gate C33 and it looked like we would be leaving about 30 mins late.

Another disaster of a boarding process. Lots of passengers milling about. I enquired about Group 0 boarding, which they said they would honour. I asked where we should wait, and the answer I got was ‘in the lounge’. FFS…

We waited at the head of the Groups 1-3 queue (which was cordoned off), alongside a group of young passengers at the head of the Group 4+ queue, which was open.

Nothing happened for about 10 mins, then a stroppy gate agent turned and started asking people to move behind the tables on either side.

If only he had turned up before all of the passengers had started queuing. I liked what he was trying to do, but he made a mess of the way he was doing it.

In the end, every man and his dog ended up in the pre-board queue ahead of any mention of Group 0 passengers.

BA has f*cked up another simple exercise relating to boarding and made sure those loyal customers feel even less valued than before. If only they had some brains.

We ended up having a lovely conversation with a retired couple travelling halfway around the world for 120k points. Not half bad.

They were heading to Ireland, then Scotland, then Qatar…

On into seats 6K and 7K, ready for a pre-flight drink, a hot towel, and some nuts. I wasn’t sure how many of those things we would actually get.

Second celeb spot of the day: Cate Blancett was in seat 01A. We noticed her in the lounge, but neither of us twigged at the time.

First time I watched the new period drama based BA safety video, which was awful. They should have left it as it was.

We both bedded down shortly after taking off, but neither of us got much sleep. We both woke in the middle of some turbulence, which lasted way longer than we wanted it to.

Vick tried to get some more sleep. I caught up on the presidential debate via the BBC news website.

Breakfast was served about an hour before we were due to land. Overall, it was fairly tasty. Nice bacon roll, some pastries, and some yoghurt.

The BA free text messaging service didn’t seem to prevent web access. It just limited the bandwidth available to devices, so things loaded really slowly… But they did load – eventually.

We arrived into Gate B35 a little late, but we were happy to be back in the UK.

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