I had one of those mornings last Thursday when things didn’t quite go as planned. I was drinking green tea inside the BA’s Concorde Room at London’s Heathrow airport after arriving in economy from Hong Kong (got one more entry into the CCR before the card expired) and managed to miss my connecting flight to Brussels.
For some reason, I thought that I was flying to Amsterdam that morning and was monitoring the flight that was scheduled to leave from the C gates. Made my way using the train to the C only to realize that my flight was leaving from A1 and the destination was actually Brussels!
The problem how Terminal 5 is set up is that there is no way to take the train back from the C gates back to A and stay in the airside. The train would drop you outside of the security and you wouldn’t be let back in because it would be outside of the “conformance” time.
I decided to walk back to the A gates using the tunnel (never done it previously) and ended up missing the flight. I thought that I may have a chance because I had checked a bag and it would take some time for the baggage handlers to locate it (wasn’t the case).
Well. At the end, I paid 60GBP and was rebooked on the following flight. The bag was rerouted to the same flight and made it without an issue.
Conclusion
I hadn’t missed a flight for several years and this was certainly the first one while drinking non-alcoholic beverage!
Survived the BA flight in economy from Hong Kong. Something was up in the city and most of the flights were fully booked. Got nice Avios redemption (less than 24K) with minimal fuel surcharges as those are regulated from this origin.
I was prepared to purchase another ticket or perhap take the tunnel train to the continent rom the UK after missing the flight. Didn’t mind paying the 60 GBP fee for my mistake.
