Flight Report : BA 93 London Heathrow - Toronto
11 January 2023
This transatlantic flight was a very cheap redemption at only 13,000 avios. For a flight of over 7 hours, it seemed too good to be true. However, Heathrow charges an arm and a leg in additional fees, so taxes were extraordinary, which somewhat offsets the low number of miles I needed. I paid over 200 pounds in extra charges for this 'free' ticket.
BA opens online check-in the day before departure. Right on the dot, I logged in to find the flight had very few open seats left to select. It had originally allocated 47C, an aisle, but there were no other windows available other than the extra-legroom row. I didn't have oneworld elite status to get this for free, so I hoped to check in now and log back in later to see if a window opens up. Interestingly, I was already at section 110 even 23 hours and 50+ minutes before departure, suggesting a lot of folks would be connecting from elsewhere.
What I didn't realize was BA's system won't let me change my seat or even cancel my check-in later.
Many European airports have been struggling to cope with increasing passenger volumes as travel gets back to normal. Headlines have been recurring since the summer. Add to securing a last minute window seat, I had to get to the airport early to sort all this out.
At just a little over 2 hours before departure, I arrived at Terminal 5 under brilliant sunshine.
In case you need a mask for your flight, you can buy an overpriced one at the terminal's entrance.
I saw a couple of hand sanitizer machines sprinkled around the terminal. Unlike their cousins at train stations and in a very limited number of buildings, these actually worked!
The landside area wasn't very crowded and I found my way to one of the machines to scan my passport and print the boarding pass. The next step would be to go to another machine and use my boarding pass to print the bag tag and drop it off into the belt. It was easy enough as I just needed to scan my boarding pass and the tag spat out of the machine. The tag's back-side had 2 red dots where I would affix and they would automatically stick together.
There were many flights on the board, seemingly Heathrow is now back to normal? BA flies to Toronto twice a day with morning and afternoon departures.
With boarding pass on hand and my big suitcase on its way, I headed to the manual check-in counters behind the machines to try my luck. There was no line and I went straight to a friendly agent who checked the seat map and found a whole row available. I soon left with my window seat in the forward Economy cabin just behind the wing. I was ecstatic.
The security line was short with the screens showing a 5 minute wait only. However, the trays seemed to have piled up on the other side of the scanner, so I waited quite a while for the belt to move. I had plenty of time at this point, so I didn't fuss. I also luckily didn't need to go through the hands-up big scanner this time as well.
Emerging air-side, the main terminal was much more crowded. My gate wasn't showing on the screen although there was a note they'll be at the C-gates. I walked around a bit browsing the shops and scanning the BA aircraft parked outside.
Shops sold the typical fare - chocolates and such, but I noticed a few uniquely British items such as shortbread and the ultra-sweet mince pies.
To get to my gate, I had to take the underground train 2 stops to the end.
The C-pier was much quieter with many gates of empty seats. I noted a number of A380s parked here. Seems BA has recalled their entire fleet back to action as life returns to normal. The downside of spotting at Terminal 5 is that it is a uniform sea of BA everywhere, and getting right to the window is elusive as many sections of gates were blocked off. Nevertheless, I was quite happy to spot so many A380s even from a distance.
The C-pier was having a quiet morning.
When technology fails, the manual sign would still be an effective communications tool.
Renewable energy is being used to power Heathrow, one screen at a time.
BA's boarding procedure has 9 zones, which seemed quite a lot. Boarding was a bit late although we settled long before the departure time. I saw 2 more board after a long pause, and the cockpit announcement came later on why we were being delayed. There was some cargo still being loaded. After a 2nd announcement, we eventually pushed back at 12:20pm, over half hour behind.
Despite the delay, I was relaxed and felt quite comfortable in my row. The legroom was decent and I stretched out anticipating an easy transatlantic crossing.
While I was delighted to have an entire row to myself, my view was partially blocked by the wing, and there was also a missing window. I needed to crunch forward to see out. First World problems of course - I wouldn't have traded it for something else further back. This was despite my seat not being able to recline since there was a lavatory wall right behind me.
A blanket and headphones were already set at every seat.
We taxied for about 20 minutes to the other end of the airport. By now, the sun started to disappear as the typically unpredictable British winter weather rolled in.
I counted quite a number of American aircraft, then United.
We took off towards the west and veered north. Just beyond the runway are a few hotels with amazing views of the airport's activity.
The crew initially served pretzels and a drink, followed by a number of special meals. The A350 is quite a nice new plane. I didn't feel dehydrated and the large windows were clean. I looked forward to 7 hours of comfort until another passenger popped into the aisle seat.
The skies cleared a little as we left Scotland's coast behind.
I browsed the wifi capabilities to find prices are fairly reasonable. If just messaging, the flight pass is less than 5 pounds for the entire flight, although I wished they allowed using avios to pay for it. However, you don't need to pay to get the flight's technical information.
Lunch was served and I chose the Hunter chicken, which was quite delicious with a good amount of tomato sauce. It came with some beans and diced potatoes, along with a quinoa salad and a very sweet apple blackberry crumble. Coffee and tea were served after the meal.
Unfortunately, the skies were not so clear and we flew quite some distance south of Greenland, so I couldn't spot the landmass. We were luckier as we approached the Canadian coast and I could see a wintry landscape below. There was snow everywhere, which looked quite good set against the mountains and lakes.
Browsing the IFE, the selection is decent although is no match to the likes of Emirates. I was surprised there was no playlist to add items to, although it was possible to play the entire set of episodes. There were also a few Asian language shows on the product shelf as well.
The transatlantic crossing was uneventful and we eventually climbed up to 40,000 feet. We made entry to Canada over Labrador with about 2.5 hours to go. Crossing the Atlantic seemed far quicker than crossing the Pacific.
With beautiful weather over eastern Quebec, I kept an eye on the snow-covered rugged landscape beneath.
A snack was served 1h20 before arrival as we were flying over the Saguenay region of Quebec. The amount of food overall is sufficient for a 7 hour flight, which is a bit too short for 2 full meals.
High clouds emerged as we neared Toronto.
The cockpit announcement noted "murky" weather in Toronto today, and it was completely white outside the window until just before touch-down. There were no views of the city at all.
We touched down at 3:01pm and reached the gate 10 minutes later.
Terminal 3 is a bit of a hit or a miss, and with a few foreign carriers parked, I was worried it wouldn't be a pleasant arrival experience.
It was a long walk to immigration from the gate. A group of folks snaked out from the first set of immigration kiosks and there was a staff on hand to keep us going as there are more machines further ahead. I had provided my customs declaration ahead of time using the ArriveCan website, which was previously used for COVID documentation.
The main immigration hall was very busy with lots of machines and staff to encourage people to keep moving along the lines. However, the entire arrangement was confusing and screamed inefficiency. There are so many machines that it was impossible to tell at the end of the line whether there was anything available. Many of us continued straight ahead into the mess of machines to find people were occupying them even when it flashed green, holding us up. After the machine spat out an error page, which didn't make sense given I got an ArriveCan confirmation email from my pre-departure declaration, staff gave me a paper form to fill it out manually. But there was no exit at the end of the kiosks. People are expected to head backwards towards the oncoming march of arriving passengers and head across to the other side of the room to find the line to meet an immigration officer.
This mass of people coming in and leaving the kiosks made things very confusing unnecessarily. Pearson is not known for a good passenger experience even before the pandemic, but this arrangement, despite having a number of staff on hand, highlighted pure idiocy. Everyone should be moving in one direction only, and not backtrack to confuse themselves and others.
Luckily, it took only about 40 minutes to enter the country. My luggage didn't take long to come out although I was mentally prepared to not leave with it. There were stacks of other bags piled up across the baggage area.
Exiting customs, I headed to the airport train to return to Terminal 1 for the bus into the city. Terminal 3 is somewhat isolated from the public transport network as the express train to downtown and GO buses don't stop here at all.
Once I reached Terminal 1, I headed down the escalator all the way to the bottom-most floor, where there are ticket machines for the GO bus or you can buy a Presto card. The lounge area shows what time the next bus would arrive, but there was a strong cigarette smell even though I didn't see anyone actually smoking inside. It was warm, but not a pleasant place to sit and wait.
British Airways offers a solid hard product, while the crew were courteous and worked hard with 1 large meal, 1 snack, and 2 tea runs for the 7-hour flight. The arrival experience at Pearson was awful, although it's nothing new. The airport charges a fortune but doesn't offer a value for money experience at all. Incompetence continues to roam wild and free.