Tier Point Run to Sofia in Jul 2023: Day 1 – Sofia SOF to London LHR

By Nige on juillet 1, 2023 at 9:40 pm
Type: Post
Story: Tier Point Run to Sofia in Jul 2023 Category: Travel
Tags: British Airways | Bulgaria | LHR | London | SOF | Sofia | Trips

Arriving into Gate B7 confused me a tad on the basis that it wasn’t clear where the actual Gate was!

Deplaning passengers walked through a glass door onto the departures concourse, but there was no typical gate furniture located close to the glass door. Odd!

Worked it out in the end. I had to turn right, head through some passport kiosks (that were out of action), and then the gate was immediately on the right.

I timed it right and whilst everyone waiting at the gate was looking out of the window, I started the queue at the boarding pass scanner!

Entry into the holding pen happened fairly quickly and passengers waited patiently to be allowed onboard.

It was a good 10 mins before we were allowed onto the jet bridge, but I was soon back into seat 01F.

The cabin crew offered to have a drink ready for me when I got back on board, but there was nothing at my seat. However, I got a warm welcome and an extra pillow for my trouble!

Looking out of my window, it was clearly another wet day in Sofia. Glad I wasn’t stopping!

We pushed back about 20 mins after our scheduled departure time. According to flightaware.com, the flight should arrive into LHR about 10 mins late, so we might be able to make up about 10 mins on the flight back to Heathrow.

It was pretty bumpy on the initial climb, but it was nice and smoothly once we had reached cruising altitude.

Another menu was handed out. More « new » meals to choose from.

This time I went for the beef cheeks, which were very tender with a nice mash and vegetables with a sauce. Tasty.

I read up on what the starter was and it sounded nice – slaw with apple and walnuts. However, it didn’t taste nice at all. It didn’t have any sweetness to it.

How do they do such a poor job on starters when the main courses tend to be really nice!

The pudding was trifle. You can’t go wrong with the Great British party desert. Really nice.

Cheese and crackers. This time with brie and a really tiny amount of chutney.

Overall? Another good effort.

Landed ahead of schedule but when we got to T3 (surprise, surprise) there were no gates available for the aircraft to park at.

BA and Heathrow were looking at the stand plan to decide whether there was an alternative to us waiting for our original assigned gate.

We were supposed to park at the gate close to 342 but the aircraft at that gate was not ready to push back yet.

Another wasted opportunity of a seamless arrival at Heathrow.

About 10 mins later, we were finally assigned Gate 305R, which is pretty close to arrivals, so that was a decent result. Of course it took another 10 mins before anyone could « drive » the airbridge to the aircraft.

I was lucky to be off first and I was on my way to passport control.

Tier Point Run to Sofia in Jul 2023