Tier Point Run to Sofia in Nov 2024: Day 22 – Sofia SOF to London Heathrow LHR

By Nige on November 30, 2024 at 3:31 pm
Type: Post
Story: Tier Point Run to Sofia in Nov 2024 Category: Travel
Tags: British Airways | LHR | London Heathrow | SOF | Sofia | Trips

We queued up at the glass door, and Despatcher Two (the one with a permanent and lovely smile) came to let us through.

We hung around at the front of the priority boarding queue until we were invited to reboard.

We waited on the airbridge, and whilst waiting, I met a guy I sat next to on the flight out to Sofia yesterday, so I had a chat with him too.

I wondered whether that might have been someone off Flyertalk, but he didn’t give too much away.

Before boarding, Despatcher One came down to me and shook my hand. I thanked her for looking after us. Wow – impressed with that! Why doesn’t BA do that to its top-tier members at Heathrow?

Back on board into seat 01F. Looking out of the window and the snow had turned into rain, it wasn’t a nice start to the day in Bulgaria!

Perhaps the bad weather might have explained why we got the airbridge service again?

Kathy, the Inflight Manager, handed out the menu and introduced herself in that sort of way that “it’s me again”…

It was the lamb shoulder again. I was getting a tad bored of that now. It was always tasty, but something different would have been appreciated a little more.

I noticed a Ryanair flight arrive, much later than the last time that it caused us a problem when having to trek around the airport.

I felt sorry for the passengers having to suffer the horrid weather when they had to head to the steps to the bus.

Oddly, no need to de-ice on the way to the runway.

Service started promptly, and I was back on the cranberry juice. The meal service started shortly afterwards, and I was pleased to see that the lamb shoulder had returned to its normal size.

The rest of the flight dragged on a bit. It’s a three hour flight on the way home, and I was getting bored of the games I was playing.

The lady sat next to me was a nervous flyer and she asked to speak to the captain.

The captain came out to talk to her a couple of times. It was really odd. I wondered whether she might be a journalist trying to learn more about the flight crew and training etc.

The captain asked her what she did for a living, and unbelievably, she said she was a journalist. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear too much of what she was saying.

I did hear her final question, which was about an ATR crash in August in Sau Paulo and some suggestion it was tied in with deicing. I looked it up later on and it did indeed happen.

Moving on to other observations from seat 01F, there was a very loud conversation going on behind me between (I think) a Hungarian who now lives in London and a trainer who doesn’t have any friends who do not train themselves, who is also a chef.

Apparently, sciatica normally only affects the left side and is caused by the tightening up of two specific vertebrae.

We arrived early, and consequently, we ended up on remote stand 357. Worse than that, there were no buses available! We had to wait 15 mins before we were allowed to offload.

Whilst waiting, I had a good chat with the cabin crew and flight crew. It was interesting to get their take on what’s what in BA.

Once we were on the bus, it was a few mins before we were decanted at Arrivals, and I shot off up the escalator, heading to Passport Control.

Tier Point Run to Sofia in Nov 2024