Day 17 : Apr 29th Flight 19 BRU-LHR British Airways 11.50 "William, it was really nothing".. not so soon

Flight 19: 11.50 BRU-LHR
Aircraft: Airbus 319
Class:  Club Europe
Distance flown: 217 miles
Tier points: 40

"William, it was really nothing"... don't speak too soon!

As I transfer through BRU things seem to be coming together, my phone services have started to come back, 2 weeks since they went off, and getting ticketed and clearing security again went without a hitch.

I head to the BA lounge and it's right above the departure gate.

I line up a somewhat premature rendition of The Smiths "William, it was really nothing" on my phone and then the information screen shows a 35 minute delay.

I have 1 hour 25 minutes between landing in LHR T5 and needing to get to the national express back to Cheltenham at the main bus station - using the heathrow express it should be a 25 minute connection worst case from T5 to the bus station once I'm through immigration.

Given the information on the screen and my connection time I should be fine, except once again BA are not telling the passengers the real deal.

The clock ticks on, its now 25 minutes past the planned departure time and the plane has not even turned up at the gate. The staff at the gate have no information and it's clear that even when the plane turns up it's going to be at least a 30 minute turnaround.


The plane does eventually turn up at 12.30, I'd like to say that I had the sense to write off my bus at this stage but because the next one was 2 hours later and the flight was going to get me the LHR literally as the previous one left I held onto the hop that the pilot could find 10 minutes somewhere and that the heathrow express would be about to leave just as I get to it.


We board the flight, its 13.10 by the time we take off. There are some passengers behind me concerned that they are going to miss their connection in LHR to Japan, the flight attendant informs them they will not make the connection as the flight to Japan is on time in LHR and shows a real lack of professionalism by then insisting on trying to chat to the father of the family about when he lived in Tokyo for a year. It seems that the Japanese chap was more concerned about his connecting flight as he didn't respond with a single word.

We land, we do get a good gate and I clear immigration quickly but alas as I get past customs I have 1 minute until my bus leaves. I couldn't have timed it worse.

I call and cancel my coach, and take the decision not to wait for the next but to get the heathrow express to paddington and a train on to cheltenham.

The heathrow express is swift enough, although I'd love to know who's getting the money from all of those £21 tickets for a 20 minute journey, and for that matter how they have permission to flood heathrow with ticket attendants 'touting' for business.

I get to paddington and have the option of a 14.15 connecting in Bristol or a 14.30 connecting in swindon. The 14.15 is longer but gets me to Chelt 9 minutes earlier so 14.15 it is.


Mistake, the train seems to be sluggish and a lady announces technical difficulties and that we would be running late. No panick I think, I'll just change in swindon as I would have done with the 14.30

At some point down the line we pull over and a train zooms past, that would be the 14.30. The lady announces that we will be 35 minutes late arriving in Swindon and all passengers must leave the train as it will be staying in Swindon for repair.

At Swindon I've missed the connection to Chelt. I have to wait for another train to Bristol and connect there. From this point on it's standing room only, which gets me thinking.

The "super saver single" cost me £31 Paddington to Cheltenham. Assuming my V8 Lexus was in paddington it would cost me less than £31 in petrol to drive one way to Cheltenham. I'd get 2 air conditioned seats in the front and 3 seats in the back which have TV screens.

Given 5 people could travel in my car in far more comfort than the train I couldn't help but think we should tarmac over all the rail lines and let licensed taxi's drive at 120mph along the new roads along the train routes, as soon as the taxi is full it goes, then onto the next one.

I'm of course being very flippant here but somewhere down the line the point of trains and public transport has got very lost.

I finally get home, 2 and a half hours later than my initial coach would have got me home.

I had a light dinner, and went to bed at 20.00, I woke up at 13.00 the next day.


35,000 miles flown, 2560 tier points, 80,000 avios and 9000 on business miles under my belt.

I now have a 2 week break until the next part of the trip.

I'll be posting about lessons from the trip and due to requests some more technical details of the points, fares, status benefits and the one everyone seems to want to ask "was it worth it?" over the next few days...