Holiday USA SW Road Trip in Apr 2022: Day 2 – London LHR to Los Angeles LAX

By Nige on Tue 19 Apr 2022 at 13:20
Type: Post
Story: Holiday USA SW Road Trip in Apr 2022
Tags: British Airways | Holidays | LAX | LHR | London | Los Angeles | USA

I was soon back in front of The First Wing (TFW) waiting for Vick who had gone to M&S to get some wheat-free scones.  They didn’t have any in stock, but she got something similar instead. I don’t want her to feel left out when I tuck into my cream tea scone on board the flight to Los Angeles.

TFW was very quiet again and we were soon through security, into the First Lounge and then back into the CCR.  We went straight into breakfast on the terrace.  Breakfast was great for me (full English), but not that great for Vick (veg breakfast).

Our flight to LAX was due to leave from Gate C63.  After a quick walk around T5 where we saw no celebs (again), Vick suggested we pick up a Starbucks at the C Gates area, rather than picking one up at T5A and then juggling a drink with everything else as we walked along the Transit Walkway.

Flight: BA0281 Equip: 777-300
Sched Depart: 11:40 Actual: 11:52
Sched Arrival: 14:55 Actual: 15:27
Takeoff: 12:09 Landing: 15:18

We headed down to the gate just over an hour before departure time.  By the time we had walked to the C Gates, we found no one in the queue at Starbucks, so we were sat with our drinks with about 45 mins to go. A few mins later we walked the few yards towards the gate and one of the gate agents noticed Vick’s boarding pass with SSSS on it, which meant she was subject to a special security check.

That led to an amusing scene where Vick was down in the security area and I was waiting at the top; I decided to go down to wait with her, at the same time as she came up in the lift to be with me!  Eventually, Vick got her act together and came down to me where we waited another 5 mins before being allowed on to the aircraft.

We were shown to our seats (1A and 2A).  It was clear there had been an aircraft change.  Rather than this being a newer aircraft with new Club Suite and just 8 seats in F, there were 14 seats in F.  If I had been in Club World, I would have been gutted: the old CW ying/yang herringbone arrangement is horrible.

The bonus of the aircraft change was that the buddy seat was in operation so we would be able to eat lunch together.

We both got drinks promptly, so we clinked and looked forward to a lovely break away. During the flight I managed to get through the vast majority of a bottle of LPGS. Oops…

We pushed back about 10 mins late and FlightAware suggested we would arrive about 20 mins late into LAX.  We have about 2.5 hours so we didn’t expect that would be a problem.

I decided to finish off season 5 of Bosch and we agreed to meet up for lunch after that using the buddy seat.  Lunch was decent.  I had prawns to start with and Vick had burrata, although she didn’t think it tasted of much. Isn’t that typical of burrata???

Main course was a rack of lamb for me with potato au gratin and carrots, although I’m not sure I saw any of the potato au gratin.  Vick went for the chicken tikka masala which she was happy with.

For pud, I went for the chocolate and sea salt caramel tower, although it looked more like a bungalow to be perfectly honest.  Vick went for the ice cream. Overall a decent offering from BA.

After that, some shut eye was required – it had already been a long day, with plenty more to come.  Neither of us managed to sleep much – perhaps a couple of hours at most. We still had another flight, although it was only a short one.

After that, I listened to Liam Gallagher and Vick watched a couple of films.

Overall, the flight dragged on a bit.  I couldn’t get sufficient seat power for my laptop to charge – perhaps a limitation in this older aircraft.

We decided to turn down the offer of additional food and drink – we were both fairly stuffed. That says quite a lot for us!

We arrived about 30 mins late into Gate 155 of Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT).  It was another very slow connection of the air bridge to the aircraft – you would think the workers would have learnt how to drive the air bridge by now!

We were one of the first off and headed off towards Immigration, Vick started to suffer from her rib cage issue.  We slowed down to help her deal with the discomfort.

Global Entry was a complete farce.  It was mad busy; new machines didn’t work which meant we both had to queue up for a manual check.  There were people everywhere; very few of which actually managed to get it to work properly.  The helpers there provided conflicting advice but eventually we got through in about 10 mins.

Follow the whole story here: Holiday USA SW Road Trip in Apr 2022