After arriving at Heathrow's Terminal 5 (which I genuinely like as an airport terminal), I made my way straight to Fast Track Security as I'd already checked in for my flight to Bucharest, and I was only taking hand luggage with me so I didn't need to drop my bag.
Now, every time I have used Fast Track security, it's been anything but. It is genuinely slow, disorganised, consistently without enough staff to adequately deal with the volume of people trying to use the small space. Heathrow really need to examine exactly how it works (or not), and change it. It took a full fifteen minutes to go through, which I am sure is slower than 'standard' security. One of the main issues was, as usual, people in front just not knowing how to travel properly and/or knowing how to avoid aggravating everyone else behind them with endless dithering. Being told to empty your pockets, and then not doing so (for example) just causes chaos and lots of very British huffing, puffing, and sighing.
After making my way (slowly) through security, I made my way to the lounge, and was greeted curtly by a member of BA staff. I cannot state how much I loathe those awful horse statues with lampshades on their heads. Why? They're so ugly! And the random BA A380 model plonked on a patch of gravel is just really strange placement.
Having been to this lounge a few times, I find that don't really like British Airways' Galleries lounge. It's large, yes, but it's always very busy and the low ceilings don’t create a sense of space, rather, it feels quite claustrophobic the farther you get from the windows looking out onto the airfield.
I often find that a large amount of the furniture is a shade dilapidated with scuffs, saggy cushions and stains aplenty. It just doesn’t feel very premium, and I think it needs a refurbishment, particularly of the chairs and tables.
It seems that there were not a lot of staff clearing away dirty crockery etc, so there was lots of stuff lying about, which again doesn't add to a premium feel. However, those who were clearing away the dirty crockery were friendly and polite, which is always good.
The coffee machines though slow provided a good latte, which was needed after a bit of a chaotic commute to London Heathrow. The lounge had a decent breakfast offering, with lots of pastries, hot food (including bacon baps, mushroom frittata, beans and hash browns), fruits, porridge and cereals, and all of these were in abundance.
I found that some USB sockets didn’t work properly, or were rather grubby with muck. Handily I had my mini powerbank with me for a quick charge. The lounge (at one end only) offers a decent view of the runway for take-off/landing spotting, depending on what time of day you are visiting.
The toilet I used had no toilet roll and an overflowing bin full of discarded paper towels which is frankly unacceptable for a business class lounge. Not good enough by a long way!
After having munched a few bacon rolls and pain au chocolat's while watching the the queues of aircraft taking off to their various destinations (with a few G&T's of course), I decided it was time to head to my gate for my flight to Bucharest (which I'll review in my next blog post).
Luckily my gate (A23) was right below the lounge, so I needed less than five minutes to get there.