wastedlife
Member
To revert to the original question, I've had a GC for 16 years now, and was about to get Gold For Life in summer 2020 and then everything went wrong. I'll probably stagger over the line next summer and bizarrely then have no incentive to renew ever again and will start flying Virgin.
The things I appreciate(d) about it are getting out of the zoo that is (was) T5 and into the lounge, but even that experience isn't what it was in the old days of T1/T4 after IAG's rather brutal cost cutting. Galleries lounges I found very missable, and come mid afternoon the Gold/First lounge often looked like a bomb site, and a lot of the cooked food was particularly foul. Elemis spa was good. First wing was very much appreciated to get out of the other T5 security queues. Had a good number of random upgrades, which usually came when I was entirely inappropriately dressed for the higher cabin - trips to India wearing very ripped jeans and home from Brazil when my adidas trackies had split and the boarding pass came back with a J to F upgrade stick in the memory as particularly embarrassing.
Fully agree on T3. BA lounges there are better than T5 I think, and the CX lounge was magnificent with one of the best showers I've ever had - like being in a monsoon.
I stopped travelling for business 5 years ago - which I didn't miss - and my travel since was pretty much purely personal and that I do miss as I want to get back to see mates around the world and go see some interesting places. The limited flying I've done since March 2020 has been pretty eerie in general - the Thursday before the end of May bank holiday I went up to Scotland, and from 4pm to close, counted 13 departures from T5, two of which were Qatar, two were American and three were cargo only. Off to Greece soon, so hopefully there's more life in the place these days.
The things I appreciate(d) about it are getting out of the zoo that is (was) T5 and into the lounge, but even that experience isn't what it was in the old days of T1/T4 after IAG's rather brutal cost cutting. Galleries lounges I found very missable, and come mid afternoon the Gold/First lounge often looked like a bomb site, and a lot of the cooked food was particularly foul. Elemis spa was good. First wing was very much appreciated to get out of the other T5 security queues. Had a good number of random upgrades, which usually came when I was entirely inappropriately dressed for the higher cabin - trips to India wearing very ripped jeans and home from Brazil when my adidas trackies had split and the boarding pass came back with a J to F upgrade stick in the memory as particularly embarrassing.
Fully agree on T3. BA lounges there are better than T5 I think, and the CX lounge was magnificent with one of the best showers I've ever had - like being in a monsoon.
I stopped travelling for business 5 years ago - which I didn't miss - and my travel since was pretty much purely personal and that I do miss as I want to get back to see mates around the world and go see some interesting places. The limited flying I've done since March 2020 has been pretty eerie in general - the Thursday before the end of May bank holiday I went up to Scotland, and from 4pm to close, counted 13 departures from T5, two of which were Qatar, two were American and three were cargo only. Off to Greece soon, so hopefully there's more life in the place these days.