Flight Report :
BA 372
London Heathrow - Toulouse
5 Feb 2026
13:15 - 16:05

...

So why Toulouse? Britain has been having a more grey and wet winter than usual, so I wanted to head south to warm up and hope to find some sun.

Originally, I had the French Riviera on my radar, but the weather there during the week of my travel was unpredictable. Nearby Toulouse seemed OK with sun for 3 of the 4 days I'm there. The Riviera probably needs a bit more than 4 days as well with a number of day trips.

BA flies to Toulouse 3 times a day and being low season, it was fairly easy to secure an affordable roundtrip. These flights depart from Terminal 3, with check-in at the kiosk being straight forward with a lot more machines available than passengers. After getting my boarding pass, I headed to the bag drop belt to send my hand carry away.

Security was quick because everything can stay in your bags now. There was even an announcement that the liquid ban has been scrapped recently, but my water bottle still triggered an exception. Apparently, liquids in a metal container are still not OK since the machine cannot decipher it.

Heathrow is not good at telling you which gate to go to in advance. My 1:15pm flight's gate won't show until 12:30pm. There wasn't much to plane spot around here today with a handful of Virgin, Delta, and American jets. After having a salad, I found an empty gate that was open near the Emirates A380 to pass the time. My mood was a bit like the grey weather.

With Lunar New Year around the corner, Fortnum and Mason had a few festive items out on sale. Their Hong Kong store had recently shut for good, and I had wondered where could I find these special items going forward? However, some of these are not typical items we give during the season, such as chocolates in a panda box.

Besides the standard Dubai-style chocolate from Lindt, I didn't know Toblerone had other colours!

At 12:30pm, I headed to gate 9 and saw a big crowd snaking out of the gate and it wasn't moving. These gates have enclosed glass areas with no toilets inside, and there weren't enough seats for a full plane of passengers. I stood for a while uncomfortably waiting for boarding.

Then came an announcement that because our original plane was overfueled, we would swap to the aircraft at the next gate. A staff then opened a door within the glass room so we can all shift next door.

We are now in a 30 minute delay, and another announcement came that there wasn't enough catering on board so they need to go back to the original aircraft to fetch some over. Shortly after, a lot of staff carrying trays and drinks passed through to the new aircraft. Each staff seemed to have 10 trays at least so I'm guessing they're catering for the outbound and inbound flights, and probably for the front of the plane only.

We were kept in the loop of the delay and the captain did apologize once we were on board. We were told the original plane was filled 2/3 full for a cancelled flight and we couldn't take it because we would land in Toulouse overweight. Great that the pre-flight checks caught this though ...

While the flight looked completely full, luckily there wasn't a mad scramble for overhead space and it was quite civilized. Legroom was very tight on this A320 but it is survivable for a 1h20 flight. There was also another announcement that their for-purchase catering was not loaded so we would only get a snack and bottle of water for free.

The captain gave a detailed account of today's weather with light turbulence expected and he'll look for a right altitude to avoid it. Toulouse's rainy weather conditions are expected to improve by the time we arrive.

Boarding finished at 1:50pm and we pushed back at 2:08pm, almost an hour late. It was a long taxi out and we took off at 2:31pm.

I didn't have a window seat today, so I just watched Youtube and played a few games on my mobile and soon, we were descending. The turbulence wasn't bad at all and we landed uneventfully at 4:51pm. Toulouse is an hour ahead of London.

The airport looked fairly decent and the non-Schengen arrivals area was fairly quiet. We were the only flight arriving at that hour.

Despite the delay, I hadn't planned much for today due to the late afternoon arrival. I wanted to check into my apartment and take it easy for the evening. So I wasn't in a hurry to leave the airport on the more expensive express bus. Instead, I took the cheap option by bus, tram, and metro to reach Jolimont, where I was able to secure an apartment for a bargain basement price of EUR 45 a night only.

More on how to take this public transport option in my return flight trip report.

Armed with a kitchen, I headed to the supermarket to see what to cook for dinner. While there was a lot of duck on offer, I opted for another local specialty, Toulouse sausages.

Usually, there isn't too much to write about on these short-haul European flights. Had it not been for this interesting delay reason today, I probably wouldn't have written it up here.