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I had a 3 hour 50 minute connection at London Heathrow. Normally I’d feel that was interminably long. However I was connecting from British Airways Terminal 5 over to Terminal 4 for Etihad. And it turns out it was much worse than that: three buses and one hour and thirty five minutes from plane to lounge. The good news is that the Etihad London Heathrow lounge is actually pretty good. I just had less time there than I’d expected!
We arrived on BA from Austin at a hard stand. That meant being met by air stairs and boarding a bus to terminal 5.
We waited for the bus to fill up, and once we were all full we were on our way to terminal 5.
No big deal, we arrived at terminal 5 by bus and followed the purple FLIGHT CONNECTIONS signs. We’d just needed to catch a bus to terminal 4, right? Well, not quite. There are no buses from terminal 5 to terminal 4.
We’d have to take a bus to terminal two to connect to another bus to terminal 4.
And we’d just missed the bus to terminal 2, so we had to wait another 10 minutes for the next one. We boarded the terminal 2 to terminal 4 transfer bus and took a brief tour of the grounds of London Heathrow.
We were then in the holding area for passengers that had come to terminal 2 for the express purpose of not being in terminal 2. They promised connecting buses every 10 minutes but the drivers of the first 3 connecting buses arrived and went on break. It was around 20 minutes before we had our next bus.
Then it was another tour of Heathrow, for the drive from T2 to T4.
Finally we arrived at terminal 4, and had to go through security screening. The first stop was a passport and boarding pass check (though you didn’t actually need the boarding pass to go through, some connecting passengers still need their boarding pass and that was fine).
That process was… slow. There was one older gentleman checking passports and itineraries. And he was slow. He had conversations. He told people what they’d be doing next, like going to get their boarding passes. Each passenger took a few minutes instead of seconds.
The good news is that terminal 4 is easy to traverse. The Etihad lounge is down by gate 10, which Etihad also generally uses for its flights. All very convenient once we’d finally arrived, more than an hour and a half after we’d landed.
The lounge is basically split up into bar, sit down dining room and buffet, and lounge area. The lounge includes a kids club. And they do offer showers.
What struck me most about the lounge is that (1) even though I was there before a full Etihad Airbus A380 flight, the lounge wasn’t packed, and (2) even though it’s a business class lounge, it offered menu service and not merely a buffet.
While the lounge was once accessible via Priority Pass, it’s now available only to Etihad’s passengers, and as a result it’s a nice experience. A good lounge is a respite from the terminal, with plenty of seating. And while the food options aren’t extravagant, it was a nice presentation and service was excellent.
Here’s the bar area of the lounge.
And here’s the dining room and buffet.
You can actually go to the buffet and bring food anywhere you wish inside the lounge, and you can also order food off the menu from anywhere in the lounge. There’s a QR code with a link to their menus on tables everywhere.
There are also a variety of seating setups.
We found a comfortable seating area.
There’s also a snack and drink setup in the lounge, apart from the dining room and bar.
And there’s a kids play area.
After we’d checked into the lounge, we were welcomed by a staffer who continually checked on us. My wife and I each ordered a burger, and my wife made our daughter a plate from the buffet (she ate the fruit and biryani only).
Despite a 3 hour 50 minute connection, we wound up with just one hour in the lounge which was perfect. London Heathrow really is a unique place. People tend to complain about it less than they used to. Gone are the days of inline British Airways connections that go from terminal 1 bus gates to terminal 5 remote gates. But changing terminals at Heathrow can still be messy. And it’s the variance in how long it can take to transit terminals that’s the biggest challenge. It isn’t just the buses, it’s the bus waits. It isn’t just re-clearing security when entering a new terminal, it’s slow passport checks.
But we’d continued moving, didn’t stay in one place for too long, so it never felt that long. And our final hour waiting in the lounge was just the perfect amount of time in what’s a very good space for what it is. The Etihad London Heathrow lounge won’t be mistaken for their first class lounge in Abu Dhabi, or for Lufthansa’s First Class terminal, but they do a nice job nonetheless.
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