British Airways operates to and from London, connecting a huge number of Europe’s capital and major cities using their short haul Airbus A320 airliners.
We took a flight from Prague back to London Heathrow (Terminal 3) following a mini-break booked through British Airways holidays. Did it meet or exceed our expectations? Read our British Airways flight review and find out…
Disclosure : this article may contain affiliate links. This means that if you make a purchase or booking via links in the article, I may receive a small commission which can help the blog to grow.
Check-in
Starting with the check-in, this was done via the British Airways app (although we did plan to drop off our hold luggage at the airport). As some readers may know, the British Airways app and IT experience has been known to fall some way short of customer expectations and reasonable industry standards. Fortunately this time, I was able to do our check-in the morning of the flight using the app, without any issues.
I usually download the boarding passes as a pdf in case of any problem with the app on the day, and I did this as usual. Frustratingly, I could not see any way of adding the passes to Google Wallet as you can with Easyjet (let me know in the comments if I am missing something).
Once at Prague airport, the bag drop for our hold luggage was not so straightforward. We had to wait until the scheduled time for the screens to reveal where the bag drop would open for British Airways.
Unfortunately most of the other travellers had noticed the British Airways staff setting up, and a queue had already formed! It took us twenty minutes to get our luggage checked in for the hold.
Security
Going through passport control was smooth, with queuing only 2-3 deep, and well staffed booths.
While security checks at UK airports can be a bit of an ordeal, here in Prague it was refreshingly different as we had our own dedicated security control just for our flight. This was pretty much straight through with no waiting.
Make sure you finish your duty free shopping, have used the toilet, and are fed and watered before committing to going through security though!
Boarding
British Airways uses boarding groups, calling each in turn to board the plane (of course, business class will go on first). We were in seats 19A and B (window and middle) and were allocated group 4 for boarding. The aircraft was an older Airbus A320.
Once our group was called, we walked past the desks and had our boarding passes checked, only to find that all those before us were still being held on the jet bridge, and we weren’t genuinely boarding. I do hate it when airlines do this in order to get a nice queue built up in the jet bridge.
Fortunately, it wasn’t a hot day, and we were only there a few minutes before boarding. Cabin crew greeted us in the usual fashion as we entered the plane. Mercifully the flight was not completely full, and we found overhead bin space for our coats easily.
Legroom and seat comfort
We lucked out on this flight, as nobody was in the aisle seat. Once I saw boarding was complete I sat there straight away, and let Chenai have her usual window seat (travel princess privileges!).
This was a lucky break as leg room on British Airways’ A320 fleet seems to be pretty tight, and is on a par with EasyJet or Ryanair. The seats look much nicer than those on the budget carriers, however I can’t say I find them any more comfortable. At exactly 6ft tall, I struggle a bit with comfort on these flights.
In between the backs of the seats in front of us were two USB charging ports, which were working fine (these activate only once the seat belt lights go out). No UK 3-point plug socket in these ones though.
Food and service
During the flight we were given the usual small bottle of water and a snack, which this time consisted of a pack of two McVities chocolate digestives. A token offering but better than nothing!
We also ordered a packet of pretzels, and the stewardess answered the call bell promptly and took our payment.
Punctuality
The aircraft departed Prague airport on time, and there is nothing much to report about the rest of the flight really, being smooth and peaceful with a well behaved group of passengers.
As we approached London the pilot quite proudly announced that we were 30 minutes ahead of schedule. I wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed this on an already short flight. If he had used the afterburners I certainly hadn’t noticed any extra noise.
Shortly after an amusing announcement from one of the female cabin crew for passengers to return to their sheep (which was promptly followed by some giggling over the PA system) we were wheels down in Heathrow, ahead of schedule…
Arrival at Heathrow
And this is where Heathrow airport promptly took back the time we had gained…
As we taxied in, the pilot announced that Heathrow had not managed to allocate us a jet bridge, and a coach would shortly arrive to take us to the terminal.
After descending the stairs and onto the waiting bus, there followed what I can only describe as an extensive 20 minute sightseeing tour which seemed to take in Terminal 3 in its entirety. Whilst it was nice to see what appeared to be the complete Virgin Atlantic fleet and a couple of Emirates A380s for good measure, what we really wanted was to see our luggage and get home!
Given the length of time spent on the bus, we were not surprised to see that once we did get to baggage reclaim our luggage was already on the carousel.
Final thoughts
British Airways short haul is what it is, a pretty solid but unremarkable product that doesn’t distinguish itself too much from the budget carriers, but nonetheless does have just a little something about it that makes it feel a little nicer somehow.
Given that we travelled just a few days after Heathrow had been affected by a major fire, we were grateful for our flight not to be delayed. I can’t say if the lack of a jet bridge which led to the subsequent epic bus ride can be attributed to this or not, however I don’t think I can directly blame BA for it.
All in all then, this was a decent enough flight, with a very good departure experience in Prague.
CLICK HERE TO SEARCH FLIGHT AND HOTEL DEALS WITH TRIP.COM
Read our other flight reviews here
