We were booked to travel with British Airways from Heathrow to Porto to join a river cruise on 30th October 2021.
Travelling out on Saturday morning at 06 40, on Thursday evening we completed the British Airways online passenger ready to fly form, To be able to do this we had to first of all complete the Portuguese health form which is very straightforward, we had to screenshot that and include it on the British Airways form and we also had to upload copies of our vaccination certificates. Those documents were all then checked electronically, we had an email later on that evening to say that we were ready to check-in the next day. Seats are allocated by British Airways 48 hours before the flight, 24 hours before check-in. Check-in opens 24 hours before the flight at that point that seat number has to be put on the Portuguese health form, if you want to change your allocated seats you have to pay for that 24 hours before,
We did the British Airways online check-in, most of the information had already been done with the pre travel info, it’s simply a case of ticking the boxes and confirming our luggage. We received our boarding cards, we could get those printed, download to a phone or collect at the terminal , all very straightforward if you’ve got all of the documents ready,
We stopped at Heathrow Thistle terminal five, there is no lift at this hotel and luckily we got a ground floor room because our cases are quite heavy! It was quite noisy, we could hear aircraft until probably about midnight and we could hear other guests until quite late- not what we wanted with a 3am alarm call! The great thing about this hotel is the pod – it’s a driverless little vehicle that takes you from the hotel to the terminal in less than ten minutes £6 per person each way, worth it for the fun factor ! Because we’d already checked in all we needed to do was to take our bags to the bag drop area, masks need to be worn throughout the terminal, there was lots of hand sanitiser around and security channels very well organised. The whole process took less than half an hour.
The cabin crew made is feel very welcome and were genuinely delighted to have passengers onboard. We were given sanitiser wipes to use around our seating area, although it was spotless. We were required to wear masks throughout the flight unless we were eating/drinking. When we landed we were asked to disembark in seat rows to avoid the usual pushing and shoving!
We felt very comfortable throughout the journey, and delighted to go abroad ( and somewhat emotional) after nearly two years!
We are already looking forward to our next holiday
