The saga of “after-times” travel.  And British Airways. Our original flight from LHR to Oslo that gave us a 2-hour layover was suddenly canceled about a week ago – and we couldn’t rebook anything online.  Thus ensued a long phone call (thank you Google Fi and Wi-Fi calling) that ended up in a much later Oslo flight, now giving us a 7 ½ hour layover.  Ugh.  We asked to be upgraded to Business – just for the Oslo flight so we could use the Business lounge in LHR – but no go – at least not on the phone.  So we sent in a complaint via the website…and…well, you know how that goes.  Crickets.

As we always say – it’s an adventure!

With time to kill!  On both ends of our journey, because we also have a late check out from the hotel since our flight isn’t until 7:20pm.  Sort of nice though, not having to rush to get the bags out, having time to reorganize same bags for flying (which is such a pain!).  So, we leisurely go to the gym, have breakfast, sort the bags, then go out to wander the pedestrian area to check out restaurants for lunch.  We end up at a seafood place, Ocean Basket, at the end of the walk where we sit in the sun and have a great lunch of fish and chips and fish bites.  Really good and lovely way to spend an hour in the sun before our long travel day(s).

Our Welcome Pickup driver arrives right on time at the hotel, and we are off the airport in a jiffy.  Of course, it is too early to check in, so we spend about 45 minutes standing in line with a lovely lady who is trying to fly back to London but whose KLM flights were all messed up because of the Amsterdam airport strikes.  (We read about that, what a total mess!)  Anyway, KLM got her these tickets on BA and they upgraded her to Business Class – that was sweet! 

The check in security folks finally arrive and sort us through to the agents.  The sweet lady asks us where our final destination is, and we say Oslo.  She says US?  We say no, Norway.  She has no idea where that is and keeps trying to tell us we need a COVID test – we finally get her to understand it is in Europe and we are fine with our COVID vax cards.  Then it is up to the agent where we finally check in.  They must have changed the aircraft because we bought seats in World Plus (or whatever they call their extra room/extra food sets) and originally were supposed to be in 13 A & C.  Now we are in 24 J & K.  Hmmm….still supposedly World Plus, but….we’ll see. 

Of course while we are checking in I ask the agent how much it would cost to upgrade to Business class.  She went to check, came back and told us 9,000 each – of course I’m not even thinking Rand (which would be about $560 USD each), I’m thinking US, and I politely say, oh, thank you so much, but we’ll keep our original seats.  Those seats are very nice. They are lovely seats, and we will be very happy in those original seats.  She just smiled and laughed and confirmed we were staying in our original seats.  Then we joked about masks and how you had to look at people’s eyes to see if they were smiling. And I said the best thing about masks is if you want to stick your tongue out at someone, they never know! 

So off we went to the lounge to hang out for 3 hours until we found out which gate we would use.  The lounge is nice – good wine and beer, good food and snacks, if not slightly weird in the selections – all Indian or kosher cheese? Odd.  And still Pandemic style, all prepackaged in little plastic wrapped portions, even the hot food. Still, we’re not complaining.  Plus, bonus!  The Simba Smoked Beef chips we saw at the store but didn’t pick up.  Yay – and yum!  Those things are badly addictive, I’ll tell you that. 

As we kept checking for the gate on our apps, we noticed our seats had been changed.  Hmmm….what’s with that.  We’re not together anymore, but one row in front of each other – and it looks like Business Class?  Really?  Curious. Well, we will just have to see once we get to the gate….which oh my God – you want to talk about a Scrum!!!  We are used to European scrums at plane gates, but this one takes the cake.  There is hardly any room at the gate entrance, no seating except for a meager row of chairs and some upholstered benches that surround planters, it’s hot as hell, there are a thousand kids (again- jeez!!!!). Virtually every passenger on the plane is there milling about.  There are 2 lone agents meandering through the crowd, checking passports and boarding passes and guarding the gate “door” before they start calling families with small children and those who need assistance.  And then it is a mad scrum to get people to move to let them through.  Ugh.

They finally begin calling boarding groups – our printed tickets have the 3 group, but our new tickets have the 2 group – we have been telling the door “guard” agents that our seats and boarding group has changed, and apparently they have ignored us, because when we go with the 2 group, the one lady won’t let us down the ramp.  We show her the electronic ticket but she wants the printed one with the passport approval.  Finally we convince her to let us go – or she just lost patience – either way, we make it down the ramp to the real gate agent to scan in for the flight. 

And, yes, lo and behold, we have been upgraded!  Sweet!  We aren’t together, but it is Business Class and we’ll manage it!    Don’t know if it was our complaint or joking with the ticket agent – but either way we are psyched for a nice overnight flight to LHR – oh and the use of the Business class arrival lounge where we can shower and freshen up and hang out for our long layover.  And bonus?  The sweet lady we stood in line with at check in happens to be in the seat across from me and agrees to switch with Ed!  So now we are at least across the aisle from each other for the whole flight. 

And the flight is wonderful.  Seats are wonderful, you can lie flat.  Sigh.  Service is equally wonderful, menus, meals served on real china, wine served bar style with the attendant coming up and down the aisle asking if we want more.  Excellent.  And we even slept relatively comfortably. 

So, even though BA is totally whacked and cancelled our Oslo flight with little warning and made it impossible to rebook online and hadn’t answered our request for an upgrade all the way through, somebody was nice enough to upgrade us for at least this flight and now we can use the biz class arrival lounge for at least a portion of our 7 1/2 hour layover in LHR!! 

Thank you BA – as they themselves said on the boarding passes.  LOL.