BA London City to JFK Service

I took the LCY-JFK service again this past Thursday, but this time flew on BA3 (the 4pm) departure; I had always taken the BA1 before.

Differences I noticed to my last trip (29 Dec)

• BA3 seems much fuller – City people travelling back to NY seemed to dominate the flight
• I was lucky enough to get two seats to myself – one of the things that makes this flight a delight
• BA has taken off the hot canapes from the lounge at LCY, apparently as the food comes from Gatwick and they were being wasted. There are cold open faced sandwiches (beef or chicken)
• On BA3 there is no warm scone with the afternoon tea service, but rather a hot sausage and tomato roll (the size of a box of matches) and a hot Smoked Haddock croquette (the size of a base ball). This goes with the sandwiches or salad option for the second meal, as on BA1

The main course I had (the steak) was not as described on the menu, but was served with chunky chips (fries for our US readers), which I had on my first ever time on the service. They are great as BA somehow manage to make them crispy.

The crew were a delight and I got 2-3 hours sleep, after Shannon before landing at JFK.

GroundLink Service

As you may recall I had a issue with a recent offer from GroundLink. It appears that the booking I made identified two problems:

• A missing address, also located south of Houston St caused a problem whereby the voucher purchased did not cover the drive
• The original offer should have stated that it was not valid for address south of Houston St, without extra payment. (This statement is incorrect I am now advised!)

Over the next few days I emailed back and forth to GroundLink, who refunded the amount paid in extra charges and offered to pay for my ride back to the airport. Both of these were really great customer service in my book.

So, on landing on BA3 (I sneaked on my phone during taxi – BA doesn’t allow this, whilst most US carriers do), I received a text message saying that my driver was ready and to call a number to meet up. (A couple of days before travel I had received notification advising that the pickup point for Terminal 7 was the second roadside kerb.) As I walked through the terminal I dialled the number. Despite being number 3 in the link, the system was answered pretty fast. I told the agent that I was in Passenger PickUp Area A, and he said the car (number 26) would be there in two minutes. And duly 2 minutes later the car turned up, with the driver displaying the number. I hopped in and 30 minutes later I was getting out at the Andaz Wall Street. The driver was friendly but not annoying, there was no radio and nor did he spend his time on his mobile. Great service in my book.

The next morning I had an early flight to MIA, and so booked the car for 4.30am. At 4am, I received a text message advising that the driver was outside and ready to leave. I wasn’t ready of course! I called the number and they were more than happy to let the driver know I would be down in a while. About 20 minutes later I checked out and the driver was right outside. Again, a nice clean vehicle with a helpful and friendly driver who drove carefully and safely to the American Airlines terminal at JFK.

I have to say my admiration for GroundLink has gone up – they really did go the extra yard to sort out a problem, made it good, and then went beyond that to make things better for me.