Tier Point Run to Hawaii in Jan 2023: Day 2 – Budapest (BUD) to London (LHR)

The bed in room 438 at the iBis Styles Hotel at Budapest Airport was fairly hard, but it allowed me to sleep through to the alarm at 5:30am. I don’t typically need that much sleep, so 5 hours is enough to keep me going until my next opportunity to slip into a hotel bed in Los Angeles in approx 27 hours time!

I was heading out of the hotel just before 6am and it was only a few mins before I was back at Budapest airport Terminal 2 heading through fast track security. It was a little busier this time with passengers who were not well versed in the art of decanting their “stuff” into trays and walking through a scanner. Patience is required in these situations and I’m not always the best patient (so my doctors tell me).

I didn’t bother dwelling too long in the main terminal area – I noticed that the Christmas decorations had been taken down, which was good to see. I headed through passport control into the non-Schengen area and up into the normal lounge for coffee and a catch up with the Vickster. I was glad to see that she wasn’t online which could only mean she was still in bed, catching up on some much needed sleep. Hopefully that meant Mango must have been considerate and stayed in bed herself.

Budapest Airport Terminal 2 Restroom Next to the Platinum Lounge

Back to my reviews of airport restrooms, which I started in my last trip in Dec.

Not a large restroom by any stretch of the imagination, but they have tried to “funk” it up a little – there are some nice drawings on the cubicle doors! Other than that, it can only be described as functional! But it’s fine for what it is. No concerns with having to use these facilities.

Back to the Trip!

As expected, the flight left from Gate B6. To avoid some of the inevitable scrum, I headed down to the gate 45 mins before departure. Very few passengers were loitering around the queuing system, so I stood next to the entrance to the priority boarding queue. Within 5 mins, there was a mass of other passengers congregating around me.

The crew arrived about 40 mins prior to departure. I normally expect boarding to commence 30 mins prior to departure to give the crew every opportunity of getting away on time. We didn’t start boarding until 6 or 7 mins after this point. Unless there’s some sort of technical issue, I don’t understand why they don’t just get everyone onboard, so they are ready to go at a moments notice.

Started feeling a tad hungry on board in seat 01A. Note that I wasn’t sure why I ended up back here rather than in 01F. I guess someone simply beat me to my favourite seat!

We pushed back 10 mins behind schedule but the captain announced that it would only take 5 or 10 mins to taxi to the runway, then a 2 hour flight time, so we should arrive before 10am (subject to ATC restrictions at LHR). That would have been a good result. It didn’t quite end up like that, but he wasn’t far off.

We were swiftly into the air and I took some photos of some drab-looking residential flats on the left hand side of the aircraft. However, I found the regularity of them somehow attractive!

Then breakfast was served: normal options, so I went for the full English, which was quite tasty. I didn’t eat all of it since I was toying with the idea of getting breakfast in the CCR as normal.

The rest of the flight seemed to drag on a little. When we got to about 40 mins out of Heathrow, I guess the flight crew received instruction to join a stack for a short period, since the duration to go (as reported on the wifi page) suddenly increased by about 10 mins. That delayed us slightly, but nothing that would cause me any concern.

We arrived into Gate A10 about 10 mins early.

Arrivals looked busy from Gate A10, so I went the flight connections route instead. I ended up in the new 3D scanner trial which (as I found out afterwards) means you don’t need to take out liquids and the like. Unfortunately no one told me that before I unpacked, so I had all my stuff out as normal. I guess I didn’t contribute much to that trial! Link to more details about this trial can be found here: https://news.sky.com/story/trial-could-lead-to-uk-airport-hand-luggage-restrictions-on-liquids-being-scrapped-12754376.

Flight Connections was very quick and once through, I turned right and headed towards Millionaire’s Door.

Follow the whole story here: Tier Point Run to Hawaii in Jan 2023