Flight Report : BA 790 London Heathrow - Gothenburg
17 June 2024
Searching for a getaway on the continent that has promising weather, I narrowed down my choices to Sweden and Italy. It was a difficult choice between Gothenburg, Stockholm, and Venice, because Venice is incredibly crowded as summer approaches and a decent hotel is hard to come by. Meanwhile, Sweden is enjoying a cool summer, and with far less tourists, it's a more relaxed getaway.
In the end, Sweden won with 2 days in Gothenburg followed by 3 in Stockholm. I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg to go to Venice, and BA zapped up their Economy redemption seats at the last minute and I didn't want to lose an entire day had I taken their afternoon flight instead. Their hotels aren't great unless I fork out a fortune, so I was planning to base in Mestre and take the train in anyway, and they weren't asking for the tourist tax during the week.
Gothenburg is only a short flight from London and had plenty of redemption seats available on all 3 daily flights at the lowest price of 9250 avios for off-peak. Departing at 0915, it didn't require an insanely early sunrise wake-up call to get to Heathrow. BA didn't offer redemption seats for the return leg from Stockholm though, but only Gothenburg was available, but I didn't want to pay extra to take the 3 hour high-speed train back from Stockholm. Instead, I found a cheap SAS one-way flight for less than USD 100 including taxes, but with a transfer in Copenhagen. It would be a very budget-friendly trip after all.
While most of BA's flights depart from their sparkling new terminal, this one is among the few that depart from Terminal 3. I checked and double checked as I headed to the airport to make sure there were no last minute surprises or changes.
Terminal 3 is quite a long walk from the Piccadilly Line station, but at 8am and 75 minutes before departure, there was no line for the check-in kiosk to print out the bag tag. Redemption seats include 1 standard checked bag, which I took advantage of to send my hand carry away fearing it'd be a jostle for overhead compartment space on the plane. This would end up to be a smart move.
With bag tag printed, I headed straight to an empty bag drop machine to send it off. There isn't much to see at Terminal 3 so I headed for security. It wasn't crowded and I was soon air-side trying to get through the long duty-free store. My gate number wasn't available yet so I explored the architecturally horrid terminal building looking for birds.
I'm not sure how the architects wanted to portray London when they built Terminal 3, but there are long corridors with low ceilings that feel very claustrophobic. A few gates were placed along here but their seating areas were closed off because the gate was not in use. Perhaps these are add-ons and as technology progressed, more space was carved out to hold the new infrastructure. A lot of American planes were parked on the other side of this long corridor, which ends in a much newer and airy holding pen with a few gates.
By 8:30, my gate showed up. 11, near the security exit. With a 9:15 departure, I had a feeling we wouldn't leave on time.
A long line had snaked out of the gate. Passengers first need to go through 2 staff to scan their boarding pass, then enter the seating area. There are no toilets or shops here - you are essentially trapped for boarding.
The small holding pen wasn't enough to handle an A320. Many of us were standing and they only started boarding at 9am. The crowd of people also backed up along the jet bridge as my group (4) was called. We are definitely not going to depart on time.
With only a backpack with me, which I always keep with me under the seat, I settled into my left window at the back of the plane quickly. I noticed a lot of passengers were stuffing their small backpacks overhead. The crew would make 3 announcements telling people to take those out as they struggled to find space for the wheelies. This of course delayed people sitting down, and by 9:35, the flight deck announced because of the baggage issue, we've lost our slot and was offered 10:14am, a full hour behind schedule.
Being a frequent flyer, I take pity on the crew who have to deal with the hand baggage mess, and now think the likes of Ryanair has done a smart thing to charge anyone wheeling a case onto the plane. This typically doesn't happen on my long-haul widebody flights but it seems acutely problematic for short-haul. A less severe version of it arose on my Edinburgh flight a few weeks earlier. The crew reitereated a few times offloading bags to the hold would further delay us, but I didn't see passengers get up en masse to take their small bags out.
The flight deck updated us minutes later that we were able to secure a 10am departure slot and pushed back shortly after at 9:46.
We taxied to the eastern end of the terminal and took off at 9:59am for the short 1.5 hour flight.
The weather over London was great with plenty of sun and a few clouds. As we exited England, the crew came by with a small bottle of water and a snack basket. I helped myself to an oat cookie, which tasted good and very sweet.
London has plenty of airports with Stansted shown below being mostly a low-cost airline hub. We didn't go at full speed whilst over the city's busy skies.
Seat belt signs came off 10 minutes after take-off and I logged onto the wifi for free messaging with my Executive Club membership. Other than messaging, I could check the remaining flight time and browse the paid food menu. There were parts of North Sea where it wasn't available though.
I felt the descent start an hour later as we were over Denmark. The announcements didn't seem to give much warning and the next we heard, we were 10 minutes from touchdown.
The weather in the area also looked promising and Sweden's offshore islands soon came into view. I kept glued by the window looking for the city but it seemed we came in north of the city to loop around for landing, so my left window was pretty much just countryside views.
We landed at 12:30pm and pulled in next to a Ryanair plane 4 minutes later. The flight deck announced we had to get off by stairs because all the jet bridges at this airport are broken. Being at the back of the plane and the back stairs opened up first, I was among the first off the plane and it was a beautiful walk to the terminal under fairly balmy weather.
The terminal mixes departing and arriving passengers and is not very big. It has that Nordic design feel with smart features, nothing over the top, and good use of wood. It was a short walk to the immigration counters - there were 2. Welcome to Europe.
The baggage hall is an escalator ride down after and despite it being a warehouse construction, it was airy and good design spiced it up a bit. It's quite impressive and my favourite part of the airport experience. A screen at the belt area showed the bag loading progress and I was out land-side just shy of 1pm.
2 bus companies operate buses to the city. Flybussana seems to be the national company with frequent departures. A cheaper option is Flixbus, which runs roughly every hour although there are parts of the day when it's much longer between buses. I spotted a 1:15pm departure from the airport on their website and booked it right away. They leave from bay 5, which is a right hand turn from the doors. There is no central bus station here - all the buses line along the road outside the arrivals exit.
It's only a 30 minute ride into the bus terminal next to the main railway station. The Nils Ericson Terminal is actually quite nice with a bright interior, lots of wood, and no beggars. Despite the delay, I don't think it would've made a difference as I had to wait for the 1:15pm Flixbus anyway unless I wanted to pay more to take Flybussana.
Flying short-haul on a traditional carrier within Europe doesn't feel much different than low-cost, so sometimes I wonder why people would pay extra for it unless transiting from a long haul flight or on redemption. This morning's flight was nearly full, which begs the question why Goteborg and Venice have the same number of flights out of Heathrow a day?