Just a not so quick review on the MAN > LHR > MIA BA flight that I know quite a few people have booked.
Some may find it OK but for us personally we probably won’t be doing it again. In fact DH said he would rather not go to Florida at all than do that route again (I think he may have been being a bit over dramatic) and would rather pay double the amount to change in a US airport or obviously even better not change at all – here are our observations……..
BA – What can I say first time flying with them and probably the last. I need to comprise a complaint, mainly about the return journey and I will be doing that over the next few days. Both ways the planes were old and tried (more so on the return) although the seats were comfortable enough (so that’s a positive). Going out wasn’t actually too bad, check in staff were polite, crew on board were polite etc but coming home was horrific. Check in staff were so rude and didn’t even make eye contact and actually Shushed us when we asked a question about luggage and told us to stop speaking, she shoved the old paper luggage labels at us and told us we should have them on our bags and how we would have to fill them all in now and waste her time doing it, I queried why we had to fill in the old style paper tags as didn’t have them on the way out and have not needed them for years and she told me to be quiet and fill them in! Madness. On the way out from Man they offered to check one of our adults small cabin bags FOC to make space in the cabin, and on the return we had 2 cabin bags and 2 rucksacks and asked about checking the cabin bags like on the way out. She said “no you can’t check them” end of conversation, so we waited till she was done doing some more things and asked again, she again said no you can’t check them, we asked “what, not at all?” and she said for $100 each we could check them. We refused and said would just take them on the plane, it didn’t bother us and we were only offering for the ease of the BA staff on board and lack of space. FFW to the plane and there being no space for loads of bags (we were on early so we were OK) and then in Heathrow as we were walking on to the plane being Forced at that point to check our cabin bags and just leave them at the entrance to the plane for someone to come and collect them and put them in the hold. The conversation went like this “you have to check your bag”….”oh urm, well we don’t really want to at this point in our journey, we did offer in Miami but were told it was a $100 per bag charge, and as we are nearly home now we would rather keep hold of it so as to not up the risk of it being lost and so we are not really happy about checking it” ……. “I don’t care what happened in Miami, this is not Miami this is Heathrow and if you don’t check your bags now I will remove you from the plane” …… at this point I took his name and informed him I would be making a complaint about the rudeness and attitude, there was no need for it at all – He said “you do that, you put all the complaints in you want, I am the Gate Team Leader, I make the decisions” and then told me his name. When we got to Man our bags were there but there was a queue of people at the desk filling in lost luggage forms and I heard the Lady tell one passenger that because they are getting customers to just leave their bags at the entrance of the plane a lot of the bags are not being collected by the baggage guys and being put on the plane, they said it’s happening a lot lately! Anyway the return journey also consisted of an extra hot cabin, felt like no air coming in at all, my DDs hair was stuck to her face after a sleep as it was soaked. Usually on a night flight it can be a bit chilly, everyone was in shorts / tshirts / vests and we were all still hot and sweaty. The food on the return was abysmal (ok on the way out) and the trays were not collected – I recon it was about 1 to 1.5 hours the empty trays were sat in front of us and still not collected and everyone just started getting up and taking their trays to the galley to be emptied, they never collected any trays and just waited for all the passengers to do it. One toilet door was broken at the back of the plane, when our friend went to the toilet the Stewardess was trying to jam the door back on the toilet and my friend said “are you ok” and the stewardess asked her to hold the top of the door, so she did and then a male steward came and said “oh you need to boot it here at the bottom” and kicked it so hard while my friends hand was still jammed in the top so all her rings had to be removed and her fingers swelled up and bruised in an instant, she was lucky she had rings on or they would have been broken. They had also run out of Coke, Sprite and nearly Tango (so basically no soft drinks) as soon as we set off, not sure if it wasn’t stocked up properly or what but one of the stewardesses came and brought us 6 cans of Fanta to stash for the kids before they ran out so that was nice. The only good thing about the Flights was the crew – they were basically working with what they had, the head steward came to talk to us from First Class (due to my friends fingers being trapped) and she was very nice and very apologetic and we re-itterated to her we knew it wasn’t the crews fault and they were being as helpful as they could etc – she seemed to think the MIA airport check in is actually contracted / airport staff now and not BA staff (money saving ? ). Anyway by the by not a great experience with BA for us personally – we may have been unlucky.
The route / Airports – Urgh what a Pain. MAN T3 was a nightmare, it was so busy and wasn’t very efficient so took an age to get through, flight was late pushing off and the captain announced it would be over an hour late as Heathrow was busy “in the skies” so they couldn’t slot us in, queue lots of groans and 15 mins later he came on again saying we had been slotted in and were off – who knows what was happening but we landed on time as it doesn’t take the 1hr 10 mins they have listed. Getting off at Heathrow and following the Purple Mover signs was easy, no worries there, it was busy but flowing and we made it to T5 at Heathrow without issue and had a lovely breakfast there before boarding the flight to Mia. Coming home once at Heathrow we had a 3 hr wait which seemed to go on forever, the terminal was rammed but the annoying thing was it took us AGES to clear security. So Heathrow has the new passport machines to scan though at the immigration side, however you can only use them if you are over 18, so if you are a UK passport holder but have a child under 18 with you, you have to go in to the actual immigration queue to enter through Heathrow which was MASSIVE when we went through as a few planes had just landed before us, plus as nearly all the rest of the queue were not British passport holders then it took an age as they were finger printing and checking all the declaration cards etc (much like when you enter the US) to say we were not impressed is an understatement. The bus from T3 to T5 on the return journey at Heathrow was chaos! There were massive queues and a crazy shouting lady at the front trying to control it all, thing is, she kept saying things like “if your flight is 7am come to the front” but she wasn’t checking boarding cards and everyone realised this so everyone was claiming early flight times to get to the front and on the next bus, it was crazy. I think it was the wait from Heathrow to Man that killed us, we felt so close to home but so far away haha. Usually when we land in Man it’s 7am so we are home by 9-10am, few hours kip then up and sorted but as we didn’t get to MAN till 12 we were not home till nearly 2pm so didn’t want to sleep at that time (or we wouldn’t sleep at night) so stayed awake the rest of the day (after ZERO sleep on the plane). Also MIA……I’ve been through it 3 times, I think in future I will try and fly elsewhere, everything is so far apart, quite a trek from car drop off to check in via the Mover Train, then check in and get to security (not to bad) then once through security another trek and a half (on another train) to the worst terminal ever, it was worse than the one Thomas cook used in MIA the other year (and we thought that was bad) – one mini pizza Hut, one pop up bar, small duty free shop and a magazine stand section. The boarding of the Plane was downstairs, once we went down CHAOS once again – 5 boarding “groups” filtering in to one area, people just walking to the front, no control or anything.
So all in all for us, the only downside of the Holiday was the travel so while not the be all and end all (it is a means to an end after all) it hasn’t left us with a positive impact or the desire to fly BA or that route again – Florida it’s self however……Amazing as usual – can’t wait to get back!
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