Tier Point Run to Las Vegas in Feb 2022: Day 1 – London LHR to Amsterdam AMS

T5 was dead when I arrived onto the departures level.  I had to wake someone up to allow me to verify my passport details for my onward flight from AMS to LHR and on to JFK.  It was too early to head through The First Wing (TFW) – security only opened at 5am, so I headed through South Security Fast Track and surprise, surprise, I was the only one around.

Millionaire’s Door wasn’t manned and I didn’t fancy trying to open it and then being told off, so I walked up towards the North end of T5, down the escalator and then back towards the complex of lounges at the southern end of T5.  The doors were open but they weren’t technically allowing passengers in until 5am – I had about a 10 min wait.  That gave me a bit of time to put my lenses in and discard my waste.

Most of the time in these windy conditions, BA proactively cancel lots of domestic and short-haul flights, to allow additional time for long haul flights to successfully depart/arrive.  The same was true for Wed through to Sun this week.  I had checked the flights to and from Amsterdam on Wed and Thu and had found that all of the flights had been cancelled other than the second service of the day.  But today, they were running the first service only and that was the flight I was on.  I pretended that BA had checked the manifest and chose to protect my itinerary.  I somehow doubt that was the case, but it’s nice pretending…

Into the CCR when that opened at 5am and into a seat on the terrace.  I don’t normally sit on the terrace, but I fancied a change.  I ordered a cappuccino as soon as someone asked.  I think I will time my Starbucks for just before getting on board my first flight to Amsterdam. Breakfast was just as nice as always, but in a different setting – out on the terrace and I had a nice conversation about how poorly the British handle adverse weather with one of the BA lounge staff. 

Headed down to Gate A13 via Starbucks and timed my arrival pretty well.  On in to seat 1F and was looking forward to a bumpy ride over to Amsterdam.  The flight was rammed – it being the only flight over to Amsterdam today, so by the time we were supposed to push back, there was still a queue of passengers trying to get on board.  There were cases being offloaded due to a lack of overhead locker space so it all contributed to a short delay before pushing back.

In the end the whole flight was relatively smooth.  If the media hadn’t made such a big fuss about it, I would have never guessed it was a tad windy out there.  Landing at Amsterdam was fairly smooth as well, even though AMS was being hit with 40+mph winds as well. We arrived into Gate D28 at the end of the pier.  It was a lot busier that it was when I was here in Jan.  It was also very wet!

Follow the whole story here: Tier Point Run to Las Vegas in Feb 2022