Tag Archives: USA2018-T03D

Brian’s Travel Spot: Things Go Wrong When Flying

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The nose of the British Airways Airbus A319 standing on the tarmac at Heathrow, waiting to take me to Manchester in March 2018.This is the second and final part of the Travel Spot which I started last week with my flight from Phoenix to London, itself the final instalment of a five-week long trip I took in 2018. Last week’s post was all about the Boeing 747, prompted by the news of the final flights of British Airways’ remaining two Boeing 747s.  However, getting to Heathrow wasn’t the end of my journey: I still had to make the comparatively short hop to Manchester and from there, get to my Dad’s, something I’ve done numerous times.

As I left things at the end of Part One, I’d made it safely to Heathrow Terminal 3, but I was 1¼ hours behind schedule. At that point it was 14:40 and my connecting flight for Manchester was due to leave from Terminal 5 at 15:10, which meant I had to get from between the terminals, clear passport control, go back through security and board my flight, all in less than 30 minutes…

Did I make it? No, of course not. For the very first time in my life, I missed a flight. This is post is all about what happened next, what airlines do when you miss your flight and the lessons that I learned from the experience.

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Brian’s Travel Spot: On a Boeing 747 from Phoenix

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The British Airways 747 which flew me back from Phoenix in January 2018, on the stand at Heathrow Terminal 3 at the end of the flight.As regular readers of Brian’s Travel Spot will know, while I was travelling extensively for work, I stopped trying to write up my Travel Spots as I went, leaving me with various unfinished journeys, so to speak. Today’s post is one of those, a throwback to 2018 and the very end of my five-week long trip across America, which started in Boston at the end of February. I took the train from Providence, Rhode Island, down the northeast corridor to Manassas, catching the Crescent to New Orleans before taking the Sunset Limited all the way across to Tucson, Arizona. From there, I drove to Phoenix for work, before catching my flight home, which is the subject of today’ post.

This post was prompted by last week’s news of the final flights of British Airways’ remaining two Boeing 747s. Although my return from Phoenix wasn’t the last time I flew on a 747 (that was in January 2019, when I was unexpectedly upgraded to First Class on my way out to Phoenix of all places!), it’s the last of my 747 flights that remained without a write-up, so it seemed a fitting way to mark the retirement of British Airways 747 fleet.

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