Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: Round The World 2006-07
Flight Log 2 : BA866
London Heathrow (LHR) - Budapest (BUD)
As I was among the
first half-dozen or so passengers to board, I had no problems at all
storing my hand baggage and settling into 3A (which is, of course,
the front seat on the left side of a BA 757). I noticed that the
cabin divider was in place behind Row 6, proving that Economy must
have a good load. (As the 757 has a divided layout anyway, due to
the galley locations, lightly loaded services tend to have the
entire front cabin given over to Club Europe, regardless of the
number of CE passengers.) In the event, it turned out that there
were only 6 of us in front of the curtain : 2D, 3E (!), 4A, 5A and
5C in addition to me. Once again, this flight was destined to be
subject to some irritating little delays : first, to offload the
bags of four passengers caught in a fire alarm at the Flight
Connections Centre - bet they were happy bunnies
- and then to allow aircraft movements directly behind us. The
captain did promise us no ATC delays and a strong tail wind to speed
us on our way, however. The cabin crew distributed hot towels, which
helped pass the time.
We finally pushed back at 0800 and
made our way out to 27L, where we took to the air at 0820, with
Terminal 4 seemingly rushing past on my side of the plane. I love
taking off in a 757 - I don't think I've ever been able to beat it
for the feeling of power to spare and that surprisingly steep angle
of ascent
Food consisted of the standard
cooked breakfast, comprising bacon, sausage, scrambled egg (nicely
firm and buttery
), grilled tomato and some mushrooms. This was
served with orange juice, bread rolls and pastries, and a plate of
fresh fruit pieces. In addition to the supplied orange juice, I
drank tea and some apple juice.
When the First Officer gave a progress report in the vicinity of Linz, I was surprised to learn that we had been flying at 39,000ft, which seemed very high indeed. The tail winds obviously did what was expected of them, for we arrived into Budapest Ferihegy at 1114 and pulled onto our stand a very creditable 1 minute down, despite those initial delays at Heathrow.
Date: Sat 08 Apr 2006
Aircraft : Boeing 757-200
Scheduled dep : 0750
Actual departure : 0800
Scheduled arrival : 1115
Actual arrival : 1116
Cabin : Club Europe (Business Class)
Seat : 3A
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