My flight from London Heathrow Terminal 5 to Toulouse Airport in France was on an Airbus A319 operated by British Airways.
The flight distance is 880 kilometers and I booked a non-stop euro-traveller (economy) ticket one month in advance of the flight.
The cost of the ticket to Toulouse from Heathrow with BA was £135.80 return, excluding food and checked luggage.
I took a taxi out to Heathrow from home as the flight was quite early at 0735AM and the drive to Heathrow from mine usually takes up to 1.5 hours.
Arriving Early at Heathrow
Of course, this time the drive was much shorter so I had nearly two hours to spare at the airport at this time of the morning!
I will make an admission: I cannot stand Heathrow Terminal 5 – it is small, everything is expensive and it’s a pain to get around.
If you want to get to Terminals 1, 2 and 3 you need a bus or tube, but to get from there to T5 takes ages and the same for T4.
This airport has definitely not been well planned and now they want to stick an extra runway onto this patchwork on chaos.
Terrible Food Choices
Heathrow T5 is very terrible on food choices and its extremely boring spending time here especially when you have to wait long hours. My advice is come last minute so you don’t have to wait too long and spend too much money!
There is a Wetherspoons at Heathrow but its at least double the regular price, for example, the veggie breakfast was £8.50! Anyhow, I picked the local Wetherspoon’s for breakfast because the only other option was Pret and I decided to not eat there again after I found out about the Nazi past of the current owners.
In the end I got myself the Wetherspoons veggie option and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.
I tried to drag the breakfast out as far as I could but I still had more than an hour to wait once I finished. I decided to walk to the gate and sit there but it turned out we had to take an airport bus to gate A10, which was an extra 15 minutes away.
Bus to the Gate
On the way to the gate everything was OK although I must say it’s an absolute pain in the backside taking buses between terminals and gates. Why can’t they just build terminals with one building?
As it turned out Gate A10 was on the ground floor and split into various sub-gates from A to E.
I would accept a bus connection to the plane in a small airport, but T5 is supposed to be a world class airport and not an ‘I-will-bus-you-to-the-plane’ kind of airport!
Boarding in the Rain
Finally we got on board after the usual theatre put on by people not being able to find their seats or place their luggage.
I sat in an aisle seat at the back, which I don’t normally mind if there is at least five-ten rows between the seat and the toilet.
My seat was on the left side so I did not manage to take very good videos of the take off but that’s just what it is.
At this early hour in the morning my favourite part of the flight was the safety video with the comedians which always makes me laugh. I especially enjoy the bit where they make fun of Joanna Lumley!
Flying to Toulouse – Asleep
The flight to Toulouse was pretty uneventful, I actually did not get up at all because I dozed off. They offered us the Marks and Spencer food but in my opinion the price of the ticket is a rip off already so I am not going to add insult to injury by paying for a crappy M&S sandwich.
On the way back from Toulouse the plane was actually delayed about 40 minutes due to an aircraft change at Heathrow. Great, I just couldn’t wait to be on my way and yet I had to twiddle my thumbs for almost an extra hour…
Delayed Return Flight
Once we got on board I was sitting at an emergency row with no seat in front of me so I could stretch out which somehow compensated for the delay!
By the time we landed at Heathrow I was exhausted and fed up with the long journey so I just wanted to get off but the guy moving the docking station to the plane could’t connect it so we were even more delayed at the gate waiting for them to bring a bus!
In the end we needed to get a train to the main terminal as we landed at terminal 5B which has no direct connection with the main building!
Anyhow, after all the delays I got an Uber and was home just after 9PM.
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