June 2024. For our first visit to the United States of America since the COVID-19 pandemic, we flew to New Orleans via London Heathrow with British Airways. After two days of exploring NOLA, Amtrak‘s Crescent overnight train brought us from Louisiana to New York, where we we stayed one night only before flying home. 

Our small American Adventure would start by flying on British Airways from Brussels to New Orleans via London Heathrow. We selected this itinerary as it offered an unbeatable price (a little over €500 return, very nice for an open jaw) and allowed us to avoid a transfer in the USA (which can take ages as you need to clear immigration and customs including claiming and rechecking any bags).

The UK being outside of the Schengen Area (and the EU) meant our BA flight from Brussels to London would be leaving from the B-gates. As we were flying in Economy we had no lounge access so we just roamed around the terminal a bit.

Boarding was started almost bang on time and as British Airways uses boarding groups the boarding was very fluent and efficient.

Flight BA393
From Brussels (BRU) 10:55 (11:08) to London Heathrow (LHR) 11:10 (11:03)
Flight Time 55 minutes
Airbus A320-232 G-EUUB
Delivered to British Airways in February 2002

The British Airways A320 cabin is a rather standard 3-3 configuration from front to back. The difference between Business and Economy being a curtain that divides the two classes and an empty middle seat in Business. On today’s flight there was a lot of business as it stretched all the way to row 10, almost half of the plane.

The seats themselves are rather well padded and comfortable, even offering an adjustable winged headrest and under seat USB-A power.

The flight was a short and unremarkable hop over the North Sea to London. During the flight the crew offered a complimentary bottle of water and either a sweet or salty snack.

We landed at Heathrow and taxied to a jet way equipped stand at Terminal 5’s main building “A”.

British Airways offers a solid product on it’s intra European flights. With the better seats and basic complimentary offering in Economy it outperforms many European carriers, especially those of the Lufthansa Group like Brussels Airlines. I will certainly consider flying BA again if they have a competitive offering, or only a small price premium.