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[tickmike]

Has anyone flown BA Business Class ?.

After our dealings with Ryanair last year cancelling our flight 12 hrs before take off we have thrown the boat out and booked with BA, never used them before.

A friend of my wife are letting us use there apartment in Murcia Spain, so what we save on that we can spend a little extra getting there. 

[vic0239]

I've flown BA Club Europe several times over the years and in general the service is excellent allowing a much more relaxed journey with access to the BA lounges and priority boarding. However, it is not what it used to be. Travelling through Heathrow terminal 5 is a bit of a nightmare and the BA business lounge there is overcrowded, so much so that it can be difficult to find a seat at peak times. Gatwick is better if you can fly from there.

The inflight meals are still "silver service", but on my last flights the choice was not good and a cold meal was served. This was put down to "supplier issues". This may have indeed been a one-off as you are usually offered a choice of hot meals appropriate for the time of day. However, the cabin crew are very attentive with a couple dedicated to the few Club rows and do everything to make your flight comfortable.

This year I am experiencing the other side and taking my first budget flight as I am tired of having to travel through the London hubs just to fly BA (no direct BA flights from the regional airports), but would still chose business if a direct flight was available as it is just so much more civilised (and less stressful for an oldie!). 

[sevenlayermuddle]

We got upgraded to business a couple of years ago, on a flight to USA.

Heathrow lounge was superb, quiet and comfy seats, and help yourself to a selection of malt whiskys.

Flight experience was a different story.   The ‘herringbone’ layout means you have to choose betweem raising the side claustrophobic partitions, or a chance to chat with somebody else’s feet.    Staff were inattentive and boderline rude, compare to an upgrade on American Airlines a few years ago.     

That earlier AA experience was monumental.  A huge area to call your own, and just snap your fingers and more champagne or ice cream, or whatever, arrived.     BA was a disappointment in comparison, basically just staggered zig-zag seating and a posher looking menu, served by slightly begrudging stewards and stewardesses.

Make sure you are not near the back of business class, else you might be just a few feet away from the unavoidable screaming babies that are usually positioned on bulkheads at front end of cattle class.

[Chunkers]

I fly BA business class all the time (twice a month) to work and back, the long haul flights like mine are excellent- you get a fully reclining seat and the service, space and food are a million times better than in economy.  They recently switched to a dream liner 787, its nice but massively overhyped in the press, I actually prefer the Airbuses cabin as their screen and seating pattern is much better,

I have the choice of flying other operators (Lufthansa, Air France) but always choose BA on my route as they are the nicest and they have a good Business Club, the lounges and fast check-in in Heathrow are excellent and definitely worth a visit.

I agree with the other posters observation about the "Love Chair" seating arrangement where you end up staring at another person, its a small price to pay for all that extra space though, the trick is to smile politely after take-off and put the screen up immediately for the entire flight - this is what most regular fliers do.

Short haul business class can be a bit of lottery, in some airlines (Lufthansa!) is a total rip off - you sit in the same type seat as economy but in a row of three they plonk a kind of "Table" plastic thing on the middle seat and call it "business" its not worth it at all.  I don't know whether BA do this as well, I hope not!

Chunks

[DaveC]

Short haul business class can be a bit of lottery, in some airlines (Lufthansa!) is a total rip off - you sit in the same type seat as economy but in a row of three they plonk a kind of "Table" plastic thing on the middle seat and call it "business" its not worth it at all.  I don't know whether BA do this as well, I hope not!

That's exactly what BA do.  I recently had to fly from Gatwick to Barcelona at very short notice (last bank holiday Monday), and the flight was almost £300.  BA's website offered me an upgrade to Club Europe (their name for short-haul business class) for £7, so I took them up on it.

The BA lounge at Gatwick was nice enough - busy, but still possible to get a seat. 

The plane was as you described - the seats were the standard economy seats (with economy legroom) but they only sell the window and aisle seats, with a table covering the middle seats.

Service on the plane was friendly, although the complimentary meal consisted of a choice between a ploughman's lunch and a ploughman's lunch.  When I (and the woman sitting near me) both asked what the vegetarian options were, we were told there weren't any, and given the ploughman's to pick at.

Overall, a nice experience for £7, but not sure how much I would pay for it for such a short flight (about 1h 40m).

[Weaver]

It takes about 1 hr 15 sometimes from Heathrow to Inverness, so getting to Barcelona in that time is not too bad.

I remember once on a work flight to Schiphol from London City in the Docklands there was hardly time to serve coffee and drink it because we were there in 25 mins, and it seemed to take as long as that to walk out of Schiphol, it was so vast. I remember I took an HP a biggish ‘portable’ protocol analyser with me, for some reason, which weighed a lot, as hand luggage. Nowadays they would have shot me on site and locked me up for ever.