Review: British Airways Club Europe A320 (LHR-HEL)

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If you enjoy flying in premium cabins the UK’s tax system is not your friend. Taxes on a business class flight to the US are around $217 (£142) and eclipse the taxes charged by most of the UK’s European counterparts. It’s thanks to these taxes that I found myself starting a trip to Los Angeles flying in completely the wrong direction, to Helsinki.

British Airways A320 courtesy of Ronnie MacDonald via Flickr

Every now and again a business class fare will appear that’s just too good to pass up….the problem is that this fare almost never originates in the UK (mostly because of the taxes). So you either shrug your shoulders and sigh or you find a cheap way to get to/from wherever the fare originates.

I’ve done quite a bit of sighing and shrugging in the last few years, so when a very good fare appeared for a business class flight from Helsinki to LA, I had to jump on it. I decided to use some Avios to get me to Helsinki (short-haul flights are one of the last things Avios any good for) and I also decided to spend a few nights in the Finnish capital to see what it was like. But first the BA flight….

Flight: BA0794
Plane: A320
Route: LHR-HEL
Cabin: Club Europe
Seat: 1D

One of the risks of travelling often is that you can get a bit complacent in your preparations for a trip and it was complacency that nearly saw me arrive at the wrong Heathrow terminal for my flight.

I was flying on British Airways out of London Heathrow so I just assumed I’d be departing from BA’s London HQ – Terminal 5. It’s where I’ve boarded all my Heathrow BA flights in the past few years so my brain saw no reason to think anything else. Luckily for me I had a convoluted set of flights on this trip and, the night before my flight, I decided to re-print my itinerary just to make sure I had all the up-to-date flight times. It was only as I went to put the itinerary into my carry-on that I noticed where I would be flying from – Terminal 3. That was close! It turns out that Heathrow-Helsinki is one of the few British Airways routes they still fly out of Terminal 3.

Heathrow’s T3 is a terminal I know very well from all my flights with American Airlines and I just about managed to disengage my mental autopilot long enough to make sure I didn’t try to check-in at the AA flagship check-in area. The British Airways check-in area was pretty empty and it couldn’t have taken more than 5 minutes from the moment I arrived before I was heading up the escalator to security.

As usual, when I travel from T3, I headed to the British Airways Galleries First lounge and, as usual for my travels, it was morning so everything was exactly as I’ve seen it dozens of times before.

The flight departed from Gate 11 which, as far as I can tell, is the closest gate to the lounge. It was certainly the shortest walk I’ve ever made at T3 – the hikes to the American Airlines gates can be epic!

As the gate agent scanned my boarding pass I got a red light and an error-beep. Excellent! I love getting these because it almost always means just one thing, an operational upgrade. In this case, that’s exactly what it was. My exit-row boarding pass was taken off me and replaced with a boarding pass with seat 1D on it.

Uh-oh. 1D didn’t sound good. I spend my travelling life avoiding bulkhead rows on airplanes due to their restricted legroom and 1D sounded very much like a bulkhead row to me. In addition to all that I’d read numerous reports, on FlyerTalk, about BA’s new super-cramped Club Europe seats and I wasn’t overly keen on experiencing one of them for myself.

A quick look at SeatGuru confirmed my fears:

It looked like my exit row may have been more comfortable.

By this stage the gate agents were being swamped by the arriving hoards and I couldn’t bring myself to be the guy who went up to them and complained about an upgrade (of all things!) when they were clearly very busy. So bulkhead row it was.

As is standard with British Airways, boarding was a stampede. For reasons best known to them, they insist on calling Club Europe, British Airways Gold/Silver/Bronze and all the OneWorld elite tiers all at the same time (that generally comprises three quarters of the plane) so the idea of “priority boarding” is, essentially, non-existent. Luckily this wasn’t my first experience of BA’s boarding “process” so I was ready, and pretty close to the door, when they started the cattle herding.

Once on the plane things looked better. Yes, I was definitely in a bulkhead seat but the legroom was better than I expected:

The seats were the newer slimline seats that BA have rolled out across their entire short-haul fleet and, while not the most comfortable seats in the world, they were ok for the 2.5 hour flight to Helsinki.

Around 30 minutes into the flight, the Customer Services Manager (CSM) served a light lunch of mixed cold meats, cheese, egg, fruit and bread roll:

It wasn’t the most filling of meals but, on a short flight, it was more than enough. And it was certainly better than some of the things being served up as “food” in first class on some of the US domestic airlines (I’m looking at you AA).

I should also probably mention the tea. British Airways does the best tea in the sky. In fact it’s the only beverage called tea by an airline, which bears any resemblance to actual tea. US airlines don’t even bother offering it (probably just as well) and other airlines that do probably shouldn’t. (Before you all write in about the wonders of the tea on Cathay and other Asian airlines, I’m referring to black tea here).

The rest of the flight was just how I like my flights – uneventful. The CSM who handled the 3 rows of Club Europe was friendly and efficient and the rest of the cabin crew seemed friendly enough as well. But then with 2.5 hours and only 3 rows of Club Europe it was never going to be a tough flight for the CSM.

We arrived into Helsinki airport on time and were towed to a parking area – no jet bridge for us. However, unlike with so many arrivals into Heathrow Terminal 5, we had stairs and a bus already waiting for us so there was no delay.

As if that bit of efficiency wasn’t enough we sailed through immigration to find that our bags were already on the baggage carousel – I can only dream of baggage handlers like these at Heathrow and LAX!

Overall it was a good flight. The upgrade was nice and it made a change to depart Heathrow from a gate in the same post code as the lounge. Having booked economy class and travelled in business class I’m hardly going to complain about much, but this flight does raise an interesting question: Would I consider paying for Club Europe (BA regional business class) rather than Euro Traveller (BA regional economy class) in the future? Probably not.

On a 2.5 hour flight, where I can book an exit row seat, I simply cannot see the value in paying for Club Europe. I’d be paying a lot more for a bit more shoulder room and for a bit of food that I could have brought onboard with me. That’s pretty much it. I can see the value in paying for a higher class when flying a US domestic transcon – but those can be 5-6 hour flights and the seats up front are considerably better than those just a few rows further behind. That’s not the case with British Airways Club Europe so, for me, it’s simply not worth it.