41 hours door to door
Sharon and I both found the premium econony seats on the British Airways 380 more comfortable than some of the other premium economy sections that we have flown on other airlines. We were both able to sleep in the early morning on the way to London. Oura gave me about 3 1/2 hours of sleep; more than I can usually sleep on a plane.
We were on the ground at Heathrow ahead of schedule just after 7 am. By the time that we worked our way from the C gate back through security, we had less than two hours to kill. We had coffee at Gordon Ramsey's Plane Food where we had dinner on the way out.
Making our way back to the C gates, the plane started boarding just after 9:45 am. As we were loading the giant British Airways Airbus 380 (470 passengers!?!), Heathrow Airport was hit with a cyberattack. Although we were already on the plane, they had to use paper to finish the boarding process.
The flight ended up leaving about 45 minutes late. The flight was uneventful. Both Sharon and I got restless. Neither of us slept. Although I had downloaded a couple of movies for the trip, I ended up reading Dan Brown's Secret of Secrets.
Oddly, they waited until about an hour from landing to serve the second meal. It turned into a very rushed affair that was very unsatisfying.
The flight landed at SFO on time. I was shocked at the line for Global Entry. At one point, there were probably 50 people in front of us and 100 behind us. Nevertheless, everything went fairly quickly. We were through passport control, collected our luggage and were standing on the curb waiting for the shuttle in about 50 minutes.
The Gainsleys had come back through Istanbul. They landed a couple of hours before us, but waited for us. The five of us took an El Dorado Express shuttle home. Dropping the Gainsleys in Elk Grove and Tom in Sacramento, it was 6 pm by the time we were home.
A phenomenal trip! I am going to post a summary in the next week.
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