A recent visit to the BA Concorde Lounge at Heathrow makes me wonder if BA has forgotten about service on the ground. My required a last minute change which resulted in me booking an award ticket with BA using my OnBusiness points. These have great last minute availability and I was able to secure the last flight of the day to JFK in First Class.

The ticket also gave access to the Concorde Room reserved for passengers travelling in First Class, or who have earned a Concorde Room card by flying 5000 Tier Points in a year.

Before my visit I had emailed the Your First service asking to book a cabana and for them to book me a treatment. The first was easy, but the second was not available and so I was told to come along on the day of travel as they always have two free chairs.

The room is accessed by the special door near the South security line at Heathrow. I slipped through and explained that I had a cabana booked. Twenty minutes later when they could not find the cabana organiser, I gave up – the booking was only for 30 minutes anyway.

I then thought I would get something to eat. But there restaurant had no clean tables. Not one out of the 30 or so they operate. Most were unoccupied, so I couldn’t get any food!

I then thought I would try for a treatment – ‘No Sir, nothing available all evening’. What?

The cabana lady was located and found me, offering to get me a room until 8pm. Whow! This was the first service I received. I asked about food and she sent in a waiter straight away. Only problem, an hour later when I had to leave for the flight, he had not returned.

The cabana was a nice haven of quiet, although I appear to have been given the one for wheelchair users.

It provides a haven of peace, a place to wash or shower and to watch TV. Although the remote is tied to the TV!

The area of the lounge is not great, but the Terrace area offers great views, not least of this massive support beam. Great Engineering.

Before I left I thought I ought to tell someone how bad it had been for me. Only none of the staff could find anyone in charge. This seems pretty weird to me. I left the lounge to get to the B gates only to arrive for the flight and find that my plane was running late – why they didn’t know this before I left I don’t know. In fact we were so late I could probably have waited for my food to come.

All in all, I was very disappointed with the whole Concorde Room experience – disappointing as I only seem to get there once every few years.