It was nice to board our 777-200ER and turn left. I had booked us window seats in rows 5-7 on the left side of the plane in the Club Suites mini-cabin, which consists of three rows just behind First Class. At the time I booked these flights, I had temporary American Airlines Platinum Pro status which allowed me to select seats for free. Otherwise, BA charges for seat selection in business class.

The seats certainly looked very nice and were well-designed. They made good use of the space. Sorry for the lighting in these pictures, but they had the mood lighting set to “dusk” mode on boarding.

The seats had an electronic screen for controlling the recline, a small storage area above the shelf and a couple of storage areas on the shelf itself. In fact, as you will see in a later post, this seat is extremely similar to the American Airlines 787-8 seat on our flight home with one exception, the door. There was plenty of overhead storage for our larger bags.

The footwell was fairly large for a reverse herringbone seat.

The seat controls were easy to use.

The amenity kit was well stocked with the usual items.

Unfortunately, there were no overhead air vents despite the recently redesigned cabin. We were offered a pre-departure beverage of orange juice or champagne.

BA 184 EWR-LHR 777-200ER
Scheduled: 18:05-06:15 (+1 day)
Actual: 18:19-06:13 (+1 day)

We pushed back a bit late and after a fairly long taxi, we were wheels up around 6:45pm. I perused the menu (sorry for all the shadows).

Around 20 minutes after takeoff, drinks and packaged nuts arrived. The glassware for my scotch was nice.

There was not a great entertainment selection, but we had all prepared for that in advance by downloading shows and movies to our respective iPads. I watched a decent movie on Netflix called In the Shadow of the Moon.

Dinner was served around 45 minutes after takeoff beginning with the soup and the appetizer.

While the salmon appetizer was good, the soup was a bit lukewarm, which was a shame as it was quite flavorful. I do enjoy a nice bowl of soup on a plane when it’s done right. The small side salad with mozzarella and tomato was more interesting than the usual bland offering. Warm bread was also provided.

Next up was the main course.

While it doesn’t look super appetizing (bad plating by the flight attendant), the salmon teriyaki and sticky rice was very good. We can talk about having salmon as both an appetizer and main course, but on the whole the meal was much better than I expected.

Dessert was also very tasty and I ordered a glass of port to go with it.

With about four hours left in the flight, I tried to get some sleep. A comfortable blanket and full sized pillow were provided. It was too warm to use the blanket though. I slept pretty well (for me) and woke up with about an hour to go in the flight.

I decided to have a lighter breakfast as I knew we still had the lounge and another BA flight to go before we got to Dublin. I asked for just the chia pudding and croissants rather than one of the breakfast sandwich offerings. I also had a cup of hot tea with milk in the English style.

We had a pretty strong tailwind across the Atlantic, so we were early to Heathrow, in fact, too early. We circled for about 15-20 minutes until the curfew was lifted and we were able to approach. We touched down at 6:09am and made our way to a remote stand near Terminal 5. At first, I was a bit annoyed about the bus gate, but actually we were lucky. We were driven to the main entrance of Terminal 5 and had a much shorter walk to transit security. We went through the automatic passport gates and got through security very quickly. We headed to the BA Galleries Club Lounge South to wait out our layover.

The lounge was large and fairly busy, but seats were plentiful. There was a full English breakfast available, espresso-based drinks in an automated machine, plus various fruits, yogurts, and pastries. We had about an hour in the lounge before we headed down to our flight. Unfortunately, it was Gate A1, the furthest possible gate from the South lounge. I was trying to decide if the North or South lounge was a better choice and definitely chose wrong. At least we got some steps in.

Our flight to Dublin was on an A320 and was on time. We were served (yet another) breakfast on this flight in Club Europe, which is just a regular economy seat with a blocked middle seat. It tasted better than it looked.

We landed in Dublin around 9:55am and walked over to Terminal 2 where we met our daughter’s boyfriend, who arrived about five minutes after we did on his United flight from Washington. We then grabbed an Uber-Taxi (more about that later) and headed into town. Of course our first taxi driver in Ireland was a redheaded guy named Patrick!

Up Next: Two Days in Dublin

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