A short hop on BA yesterday let me position for my flight today to the USA. A nice stay and a lovely meal with some great staff yesterday in the Concorde Room at Heathrow set me up for a great flight. Although short, the crew were lovely, even giving me a birthday card as I turned 57 on the day.

Concorde Room and BA1404 to Manchester

Nipping off the tube and through the First Wing, I managed to get to the lounge late in the afternoon. The room wasn’t too busy and so I managed to snag a sofa, with power points adjacent. The food is pretty good this month, and the lamb main course was tasty.

There have been recent complaints that the staff are not very attentive. I didn’t find this – instead they regularly came by to refresh my water or to offer another coffee.

Boarding my flight to Manchester from gate A1, I got to try the self boarding gates which worked pretty well. They were able to compare my picture from the security gates to me and allowed me to board pretty quickly. Once on board the crew were lovely – noticing the tag on my bag and welcoming me back. Once service started, they knew it was my birthday and wrote me a little note to say Thank You. As I had been working all day and not much attention had been paid to the day, (except my Facebook friends who were great), it was a nice touch. As was the mini-bottle of champagne they slipped me as I disembarked.

On to the Hurricane.

My reason for the short trip to Manchester is flying on a very cheap fare from Manchester to San Antonio, Texas. At least that was the plan! A rather large hurricane has other ideas. It looks as if AA flew most of their planes to SAT yesterday and I hope they will get me there tonight. I will keep you informed.