Flight Report : BA 1412 London Heathrow - Belfast City
17 September 2024
This short vacation covers both Belfast and Dublin. With a 2.5 hour bus ride between the two, I searched for an open jaw combination from London Heathrow that is reasonably priced and avoids backtracking. BA was able to price one for about 140 pounds, which includes 1 checked bag.
Today's flight heads to Belfast City, which is just a short bus ride to the city centre, a much more convenient airport to use than Belfast International. With a 11:30am departure, I could still retain a half day's sightseeing.
Terminal 5 wasn't too busy when I arrived at just after 10am. I first headed to the machines, which spat out my boarding pass, but couldn't print a bag tag. Perplexed, I headed to the bag drop machine. Unlike other airlines, BA's bag tags are printed at step 2.
Security wasn't too busy either but they still haven't upgraded to the new scanners so I had to take out my laptop. But soon, I emerged air-side and even the flight's gate hasn't shown up yet. It was far more crowded here and I browsed around a few shops looking or a simple sandwich lunch. Good that there are plenty of meal deals for a quick bite take-out without breaking the wallet.
Today's flight would depart from a downstairs gate and it became apparent we would need to take the bus for the aircraft. We were scanned in but the crowd was held from boarding even though a few buses were already parked there. It was an uncomfortable standing ordeal after a while and it took some time for the gate staff to announce that the path to the aircraft was blocked which was why they couldn't send us out. I was only able to board the bus at 11:28am, so we would be delayed out for sure.
I was able to secure a seat at the front of the bus for the grand view. We looped around the terminal and the plane was just parked slightly offshore.
Despite the delay and the fact that there were more passengers coming on the next bus, I quite enjoy this atypical boarding and walking up to the plane from the ground.
The A320 had seemingly newer seats but there is no PTV. As I settled in and enjoyed my window view, I spotted a "final customers" bus pull in at noon. At 12:06pm, the crew announced that we're good to go.
While I was waiting for pushback, I helped myself to the reading materials to check out the food prices.
The meal deal was substantially more expensive than in the terminal, as expected.
We pushed back at 12:11pm after a short apologies announcement from the flight deck, who reiterated they tried to get us through quickly but on the bright side, we would have only a short taxi to take-off at the western end of the runway, with a caveat that it's Heathrow and they could still send us around the neighbourhood.
We did reach the take-off position fairly quickly but had to wait a lot of planes pass by, turn around, and depart before it was our turn. We finally rolled at 12:35pm, just an hour behind schedule for our hour-long flight. We would take off towards London but looped north quickly and not fly over the city.
This looks like the Thames bending around Kew Bridge with the Royal Botanic Gardens on the right side.
I kept my eyes glued for London's skyline in the far distance with the Thames being my marker.
The City is off on the top right with the Shard barely making the shot. I prefer the the arrival path into Heathrow from the east, which flies over Central London with incredible views before touchtown.
With London behind us, the weather continued to be beautiful but couldn't spot any other major cities anymore.
The crew came by to distribute a free bottle of water and snacks to everyone. This one is different than the snacks I got on similar short flights with BA earlier this year.
We exited England just north of Liverpool, which was on the other side of the plane, and soon crossed the Isle of Man as well.
By now, we've started our descent into Belfast and with the final turn, it looked like we would land from the east. Although the airport is quite close to the city, it's just east of it so I won't be able to spot it on approach.
Similar to London, they were having a beautiful day as well and the forecast looked promising for the coming few days.
We landed at 1:28pm after a flight time of just under an hour.
Like in London, we would take the stairs to finish our journey. This is a relatively quiet airport so it was quick and easy to go through. My bags didn't take long to come out as we were the only arrival in. There are 2 baggage belts and our flight used the further one next to the exit. The terminal design is nothing spectacular but utilitarian and sufficient for a domestic hop.
Being a small airport, it was only a short walk to the outside and the bus stop is off to the left. Route 600 took only about 15 minutes to reach the city centre, charging 2.3 pounds and contactless is accepted. It's a small bus but there are luggage racks at the front and we departed with barely any standing room left.
Bus gates are a bit problematic at Heathrow and I was a bit surprised to get the stairs treatment for both departure and arrival. Nevertheless, it's a short flight and Belfast City is a good airport to use thanks to its very prime location close to the city centre.