Two adults and a toddler take to the skies (British Airways in general)

Member Name: KLockwood75

Product:	British Airways in general
Date:	02/06/09 (97 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy booking process, online check-in, priority boarding for families

Disadvantages: Delays at Heathrow, lack of choice of snacks

Last week was our first experience of travelling abroad as a family when we spent a week in Switzerland. My husband and I travelled abroad regularly before we had our little boy, but we have stuck to holidays in the UK over the last couple of years due to not having the money for expensive foreign holidays and the fact that we thought taking him abroad would just be too much hassle. Our accommodation (a house by Lac Leman owned by family friends) was already organised so all we needed to do for our holiday was find the right flights.

We were looking to keep the costs as low as possible without making it all too complicated. After much searching online, we discovered the cheapest flights were through Easyjet, but the times weren't really what we wanted and it was going to cost us a fortune to park the car at Luton or Stansted. The next cheapest flights came us as being on British Airways, travelling out of Heathrow Terminal 5 which as we live in West London and can get to Heathrow in 20 minutes on the tube was perfect for us.

**Booking Process**
We booked the flights online through www.ba.com. I found the booking process easy to use, although it does take a while to get a complete price for your flight. However, I book a lot of flights as part of my job, so I'm very used to the way the British Airways website works. This may mean I find it a bit more user-friendly than somebody who is new to the process, but the whole booking only took us about 10 minutes to complete. We then received an email with our e-ticket reference immediately after completing the booking which we printed and put away 'somewhere safe'.

**Online Check-In**
To minimise time spent queuing at the airport with an impatient toddler desperate to go on his first ever aeroplane, I checked us all in online the night before. As we were travelling with a young child, we had already been allocated seats together by BA, but usually you can choose your own seats at this point. The online check-in process was easy to use - I simply entered the booking reference to bring up our travel details and we could then print out our boarding passes.

**Check-In Process**
We arrived at Heathrow Terminal 5 approximately two hours before our flight was about to depart. As we'd already printed the boarding passes, we went straight to what BA call the 'Fast Bag Drop'... this wasn't as quick as it maybe should have been, as it seemed to be taking the woman at the desk a long time to check everyone's passports, boarding passes and luggage. To be honest, I don't think it was much faster than a normal check-in process - I can't see what was taking her so long as coming home from Geneva it was about three times as fast (the famous Swiss efficiency maybe?). It didn't help matters when she suggested we reorganise the contents of our cases in the middle of the airport terminal to try and get them under the weight limit, which put us back at the end of the queue. On the plus side, we did manage to avoid paying the £25 penalty charge for our cases - so at least it was helpful that she gave us the opportunity to try and sort the problem, instead of just charging us on the spot!

**The Flight**
On proceeding to our gate (following breakfast in Starbucks), we were pleased to see that our flight was due to leave on time. As we were travelling with a two year old, we got priority boarding which was a big help. We left our buggy at the gate and it was taken away to be stored in the hold. The only problem with the priority boarding was that we were on the plane for 30 minutes before the scheduled departure time. This would have been absolutely fine if we'd actually taken off on time - the problem was that somebody decided at the last minute that they didn't want to go on that flight after all, necessitating the removal of their luggage from the hold, and meaning that we missed our departure slot. As any regular travellers through Heathrow would know, this meant waiting for a new slot, followed by a very, very slow taxi to the runway before eventually taking off half an hour late.

The flight itself was fine. It's only just over 1.5 hours flight time to Geneva and a clear, sunny day meant a smooth ride. We were served drinks but no meals on the outbound flight. The one reservation I had with this was with the snacks that were served with our drinks - I'm happy to eat anything and the little bag of nuts, seeds and corn snacks tasted ok, but there was no provision for snacks for children. I don't really think you can expect toddlers to want to eat nuts and seeds, and as you have to pay full price for a 2 year old on BA, I think they're entitled to something edible. The cabin crew were, however, very helpful with filling up my son's drinking cup with apple juice and water to our request which was a plus. We eventually arrived in a very hot and sunny Geneva about 25 minutes late.

**Return Flight**
We hadn't been able to do the online check-in for our return flight, but actually it was even quicker to do it through the machines at the airport. From typing in our booking reference to having three printed boarding passes took us approximately 2 minutes! The bag drop was much quicker there too - probably helped in our case by the fact we'd managed to get our cases under the weight limit this time! We arrived at the gate about 35 minutes before our scheduled departure time and were almost immediately called through to board the plane. Again, we had priority boarding due to having a toddler and our buggy was taken away at the gate. This time, the plane was loaded up and ready to go much more quickly, and we ended up taking off about 5 minutes early!

The flight was again very smooth and this time we got sandwiches as well as drinks. The sandwiches were ok - not fabulous quality but definitely edible. The 'meat-eaters' option consisted of one cheese, ham and pickle sandwich and one tuna and sweetcorn sandwich, plus a chocolate biscuit. Our two year old was served the same as us which was fine as he likes tuna and sweetcorn (once I'd removed all the lettuce which was apparently 'yucky'). We were flying over London well ahead of our scheduled arrival time so ended up circling over the Thames (good views of the Dome, the Thames Barrier and the Dartford Crossing!) and then returning to land from the West about 15 minutes early. We had to wait a few minutes for a space, but reached the terminal about 5 minutes before our scheduled landing time which is good for Heathrow. I was actually really impressed with the speed of everything in Terminal 5 arrivals - I think we must have been lucky with our timing, but I have never collected bags and been on the tube home half an hour after landing before!

**Overall Thoughts**
In general, our flights were a positive experience. The delays on the outbound flight were clearly down to one individual initially, and then the sheer business of Heathrow after that, rather than anything that BA had done wrong. I do think the fast bag drop process at Heathrow could have been faster - the fact that they did it all so much quicker in Geneva was testimony to that. There's not that much point in bothering to print out boarding passes when it takes half an hour to drop off your bags, but that is just one of those things. Maybe they were just having a bad day? And at least the fact that the bag drop and security took a while meant I didn't spend a fortune in the shops before I'd even left the UK!

In terms of travelling with a child, they did make it fairly easy for us, especially with the pre-allocated seats and priority boarding. I would have preferred to get the buggy back a bit earlier as it's hard work carrying a heavy 2.5 year old for long distances (particularly in Geneva where passport control was extremely slow and we had to walk a long way), but that wasn't a really big deal. The other minor issue is that it would have been nice if they could do something for children - an activity pack like on Virgin, or even just a more child-friendly snack - but with a 2 year old, that wasn't really a big deal.

Overall, I would recommend BA more now that I would have done after last time we travelled with them (when we spent 3 hours on a plane getting home from Glasgow) - their pricing is more competitive and it's definitely worth looking at them for an option. We paid £100 each for our return flights, and even Easyjet was coming up as £87 per person, so it was worth it for us just for the convenience of flying from Heathrow.

Summary: Overall, a positive experience... this time!