Tier Point Run to Hawaii in Feb 2024: Day 6 – London Heathrow LHR to Amsterdam AMS

By Nige on Wed 21 Feb 2024 at 14:46
Type: Post
Story: Tier Point Run to Hawaii in Feb 2024
Tags: AMS | Amsterdam | British Airways | LHR | London Heathrow | Trips

I had a funny journey back to Arrivals. The guy that was sitting next to on the flight from Boston said goodbye to me as I jogged off to catch the train back to Arrivals.

When I reached the train station at Satelite B, there were a huge number of passengers waiting for a train. I did my normal, and headed to the furthest carriage away and squeezed my way to be close the train door. Good job I did!

I had to wait two mins for the train to arrive, and then I found it was full, having already collected passengers from Satelite C. That meant a small number of Boston passengers had to push themselves onto the train.

When it reached Arrivals, I jogged past everyone and headed up the escalator. As I joined the queue heading into passport control, I bumped into the same guy I was sat next to on the flight from Boston. He had walked along the transit walkway and almost beaten me.

We exchanged pleasantries, and being an American, he went a different way to me through passport control. It’s a funny old world…

I didn’t have a straightforward trip through automated passport control either. I tried twice, and on both occasions, it told me to try again. I was successful on the third attempt.

I headed up to the Arrivals Lounge and had a shower. I also spent an hour updating the blog. The reason was so that I could head back to Business Parking to drop my bag (including my laptop).

There was no point in me taking it to Amsterdam, and there was no need to spend £20 storing it at Left Luggage.

It was a wet day around Heathrow, so I was a bit damp on my way back to the terminal after dropping off my bag in the car.

I headed through The First Wing temp security and dropped my jumper in the CCR.

I walked to Satelite B so that I could pick up a Starbucks. I remembered to walk back along the transit walkway to avoid joining the arrivals flow.

I waited as long as I could before eating. I guess I ended up having brunch since it was 11am when I finally tucked in. Breakfast on the CCR terrace was as good as always.

I was approached by a guy in the CCR – I don’t say that, that often! He said he recognised me from the blog, and we had a good chat about all things BA. Nice to know there are real people behind these TP runners.

Flight: BA0438 Equip: A319
Sched Depart: 12:45 Actual: 12:55
Sched Arrival: 15:10 Actual: 15:21
Takeoff: 13:23 Landing: 15:08

The flight to Amsterdam left from Gate A17. I can’t remember ever boarding from that gate before, so a new experience for me.

Nothing much to write home about in respect to boarding – not quite as bad as some BA boarding experiences at T5. On into seat 01F.

We pushed back about 15 mins late and didn’t take off until 40 mins after departure time. So we were likely to arrive late into Amsterdam.

Salad lunch was served. I went for the quinoa salad, which was very tasty. I didn’t eat much of it, to protect my hunger for eating dinner with the Mrs.

I couldn’t resist the orange pana cotta, which was excellent.

I always look out of the window, but I noticed that the aircraft was in the clouds for the whole flight. I can’t remember the last time that happened.

After landing, it was unsurprising that taxiing took forever – Schipol is such a big airport.

We finally arrived into Gate 16. Worth noting that the ground team were super fast with getting the air bridge in place.

Follow the whole story here: Tier Point Run to Hawaii in Feb 2024