Good morning everybody from the American Airlines arrivals lounge in terminal 3 at London’s Heathrow airport where me and my parents are simply relaxing for a short while after we have arrived from Miami 🏝️😎 earlier in the morning on Americans Boeing 777-300ER in flagship business. Now we will continue our journey over to Paris, France 🇫🇷 and finally see what it has to offer. We will be flying British Airways on their Airbus A320 in Club Europe for this journey but back to the lounge, it is very nice it’s kind of a small admirals club for arriving passengers hence the name arrivals lounge, it was kind of busy since the later morning is when American has majority of their arrivals into Heathrow from their hubs in Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago O’Hare 🫘💨 New York-JFK 🗽🍎 Charlotte and our flight from MIA. The staff were excellent as well and even prepared a special dessert for my mom since it’s her birthday today so shout outs to them! Unfortunately we can’t stay long here as we do have a connection to make which involves us switching from terminal 3 to T5 where British Airways operates their mega hub out of LHR. The ride on the Heathrow express wasn’t long at all and we were soon in the check in hall of terminal 5 where once again we only needed to make a line to drop our bags off which wasn’t a hassle at all since here at LHR, Club Europe passengers get a dedicated check in counter and even a priority security lane which we could ALL use this time which made our connection so much easier. And unlike US domestic first class flights, lounge access is indeed included even on this short sub 1 hour hop to Paris allowed us to enter the lounge which was extremely nice with great food and wonderful staff. Even allowing me to plane spot which was a dream come true for me since Heathrow is one busy airport! We once again had more opportunities to get work done which I took advantage of to study for this calculus test I have to take upon returning to the US 🇺🇸 our layover went by way too fast and we soon had to make our way to gate 505 to board our flight.
FLIGHT INFO
Origin: London Heathrow 🇬🇧 (EGLL)
Destination: Paris Charles de Gualle 🇫🇷 (LFPG)
Flight Time: 0:39
Airbus A320-200 (British Airways)
Server: Expert
Taking us over to Paris this afternoon will be G-EUYA a November 2008 built Airbus A320 who’s spent its entire 16 years and celebrating its sweet 16 with BA. Now before we board, what is Club Europe exactly? Well it’s what British Airways calls it intra European business class and while you do get complimentary lounge access which you don’t in the US 🇺🇸 the hard product is what holds intra European business class behind which you’ll be seeing right now as we board early on thanks to our business class tickets.
BAs A320s consist of a whopping 180 seats on board and they are ALL economy seats utilizing the B/E Aerospace Pinnacle seats in the standard 3-3 configuration. And what do us club Europe passengers get? Well the first 12 rows are reserved for us and unless you score the bulkhead or exit seats, the legroom is the same as the rest of the plane and it’s bearable for shorter hops but can get tight in the longer flights. The only real difference between club Europe and euro traveler is that the middle seats are blocked and replaced with tray tables so hooray I guess? I am seated this morning in 3F while my mom and dad are both in the row behind me. We began our pushback early on which was good since we’d be going all the way to runway 27L for some reason which means it’s gonna be a really long taxi to Heathrow but it wasn’t the end of the world since LHR is one of the best airports around for plane spotting.
My right side seat meant we’d get a view over Paris on approach but sacrificing a view of Heathrow if we took off from RWY 27R that is but since we took off from RWY 27L, we’d get to see BOTH which was just a treat and really got me in the mood for this short hop to CDG!
Till the next time London! 👋😉
The English countryside is one sight to see and I wish I was down there but maybe I’ll get the chance if I book a longer Heathrow layover 😅 but here we are crossing the southern coast with a view of Southampton, England 🏴 in the distance!
We reached our cruising altitude of 25,000ft pretty quickly right above the English Channel that separates the UK 🇬🇧 from France 🇫🇷 unfortunately, the short flight time meant that we didn’t get any type of service but our crew were really friendly and even had some time for some aviation related chit chat especially one guy named Dan so if your reading this, wassup! so I’ll give them 1 star ⭐️ the lowest rating so far but once again it’s a short flight. Because of this and more importantly since it isn’t included, I opted out of purchasing Wi-Fi which is powered by Inmarsat EAN i downloaded the BA app just in case there wasn’t a website set up to stream entertainment like American offers and sure enough content was available but I mainly looked out the window since this a part of the world I don’t visit often but it was soon time for descent.
Our approach into Paris this afternoon will have us fly into French skies over Dieppe before flying past the northern areas of the city on right downwind of both Le Bourget and CDG airports before turning turning base over a few small towns and coming into land on RWY 26L and off in the distance is Paris! Now this isn’t the first time I’ve seen Paris overhead and I saw it on my flight to Dubai, UAE 🇦🇪 back in June but this would be the first time I’d see it this low to the ground.
The UK 🇬🇧 is somewhat a bit different compared to the rest of Europe as they use pounds and not euros, drive on the left side compared to the right but once thing they do have in common at least with France 🇫🇷 that is that their country sides are just as gorgeous and it was incredible looking down at them as we make the final approach into CDGs RWY 26L!
TOUCHDOWN! Welcome for the first time to Paris Charles de Gualle airport! 🇫🇷 I’m glad I got to mark off another major European airport off the list. Now onto club Europe, in my opinion it isn’t truly worth it. I was only booked into it since I booked the entire journey from Miami 🏝️😎 to Paris via London in business class and that’s how I ended up here. Only getting an economy seat with a blocked middle seat and the same cramped legroom just doesn’t justify the cost. Now I’m not totally sure if you get meals or not as this flight was short so I can’t say anything there but the ground experience definitely is good and free lounge access is still worth something but if they really wanted to make it better, introduce bigger recliner seats like they have in the US 🇺🇸 or at least make the legroom much bigger. This isn’t really dedicated to BA since every European carrier is like this don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed this short hop and I would definitely find myself back in British Airways short haul but maybe in standard euro traveler to save some funds.
Once I stepped off the plane, I was blown away with the decor of CDGs terminal 2C it’s really nice I wish that more US airports would invest in making their terminals aesthetically pleasing to look at, passport control 🛂 once again was light and also involved a simple passport scan and facial recognition and it was off the baggage claim which also went pretty easily and we soon hopped into an Uber and made our way to the hotel right off the Seine next to literally every attraction Paris is home to and after unpacking it was off for a late lunch and pretty much go explore the city. That’s it regarding my flight from London Heathrow, UK 🇬🇧 to Pari CDG, France 🇫🇷 on the British Airways Airbus A320 in club Europe stay tuned for next weekend as we fly back to LHR and eventually back to MIA back in club Europe and flagship business respectively and as always between now and the next time, see you in the sky! 😉👋