Introduction
Most savvy FTers who are familiar with Star Alliance will have no doubt heard about BMI’s amazing Miles & Cash redemption, where you can get a roundtrip in First Class from Zone 2 Europe to North Asia for a mere 50,000 miles plus £340 cash. Quite frankly, it’s simply the best offer possible, and after accumulating 20,000 miles and buying the rest, I was able to take advantage of it. I specifically wanted to use it at least once before the big bad Lufthansa gets its hands on Diamond Club and abolish the only good thing going for it!
So, day after day of poring through the ANA tool ensued for about 3 weeks, and eventually I settled on going to Japan for 6 days then going back home to Korea for 3 weeks. In order to start the journey in Zone 2, it was necessary to position myself there in the first place, and I redeemed a separate, very cheap M&C booking to get me to ARN. I contemplated staying for a few days in ARN, but actually decided to just do a same-day turnaround in the end, since I didn’t fancy travelling around alone that time.
Pre-flight
Like most of my trips back home, it invariably began with staying up all night. I should have concentrated more on packing and tidying up the night before, but instead I chose to spend almost the entire evening watching TV and talking to my housemate, which meant that it was 1am by the time I actually lifted a finger.
So, I spent the night tidying up and packing for the trip. But then I had a major scare regarding my plans – my rather insane plan, of LHR-ARN, ARN-LHR and then LHR-NRT all in the same day, basically relied on both European segments being more or less on time. Being used to the intercontinental flights that are almost invariably on time, it never occurred to me that European flights might be any different… that is, until I checked the Flightstats website. There, I found some very disconcerting information such as the average delay for that flight (45mins – which sounds not too bad, until you realise my connection in ARN was only 1h15m) and also the flight back, which wasn’t any better. Then it dawned upon me that if the worst case scenario should happen, I could potentially end up missing my LHR-NRT flight, which would be just too disastrous for words.
After all this, my previously relaxed and anticipating outlook for the day changed to one of anxiety with regards to the connection problems. I headed on time to Heathrow on the bus, which took only slightly longer than usual considering that I was travelling on a Monday during peak hours. Having not slept a single hour during the night, I zonked out for the first hour of the 1h40m journey then spent the next 40 minutes still worrying about the connections – it started feeling less and less like a good idea every time I thought about the worst case scenario. And I had no travel insurance. Bummer.
SK526 LHR ARN STD 1035 STA 1405
MD-80, Seat 21A
It was roughly 8:30am when I reached the SAS check-in desks, after depositing my bag at the left luggage for the day to collect when I came back to LHR to check-in for my NRT flight. Then I headed to the SAS check-in desks where, as I only had hand luggage, I just keyed in my PNR into the self check-in machine spat out a boarding pass for my pre-assigned seat, 21A. The boarding pass was strange as it had no perforation for the gate agent to rip the larger part – instead, it was just one large piece of cardboard and had a barcode, which I presumed will be scanned to register the passenger at the gate.
Once I cleared the security, I tried to go to the Singapore Airlines Silver Kris lounge based on my later LHR-NRT flight in First Class, but the agent was quite adamant that I needed a boarding pass, not just a PNR printout with the e-ticket numbers. Off I went to the ANA transfer desks, where apparently they will only open around 4:30pm – useless. So obviously the Silver Kris lounge was going to be out of bounds, but what about the SAS London Lounge? After spending 10 minutes trying to explain just what I’m doing today (she really looked confused… as would I, if anyone else was trying to explain such a crazy routing) she eventually gave up trying to make sense of it, and just let me in anyway. Thank goodness, because I was beginning to get really sweaty and was quite frankly desperate for a shower. The shower was decent enough, and the hot water was reliable, and I emerged 30 minutes later in a considerably better state than before. The rest of the time in the lounge was spent just using the internet and having a glass of orange juice – standard stuff really.
Fairly soon, it was time to board the SAS flight to Stockholm. I went to the gate, which was quite close to the London Lounge, where they hadn’t started boarding the flight, and the holding pen was pretty full up. Within 10 minutes they started boarding the flight, with no reference to priority boarding so everyone just stood up at once to board and I was one of the first to find my way down the corridor towards the MD-80 aircraft. I’ve flown it before (also on SAS) but overall I was quite surprised at the age of the aircraft, which was visibly quite old. Not quite “held together by duct-tape” old, but you just feel that it has been around for a while.
I chose 21A based on the description on the SAS internet check-in website as being “emergency exit – extra legroom” and I was not disappointed. It must have been a good 36-37” of legroom and I was glad to be able to stretch out and essentially fall asleep for the entire flight until 20 minute before landing, when I was awake enough to realise that – being in Economy Class – I was expected to buy orange juice or coffee, and instead quietly observed the landing into Stockholm.
The legroom in Row 21 - not bad!
“Nobody understands me!”
We landed uneventfully into Stockholm and I made my way into the terminal – the terminal had a very old and depressing feel to it (not at all helped by the fact that it was close to being a ghost-town), and just felt much less “Scandinavian” than, say, CPH airport.
I walked towards the transfer counters where there was no-one available, so I naturally think to myself, “I have a ticket that leaves here, I need a boarding pass, so I should just go to the landside check-in counters and come back in”. What a bad choice this turned out to be.
The passport control officer was completely baffled by my itinerary (LHR-ARN, a 1-hour stop, then ARN-LHR, then LHR-NRT the same day) and seemed worryingly close to refusing me entry to Sweden. I did my best to explain, but he just couldn’t seem to understand even after 15 minutes, during which time I was yet again lamenting my own ambitious plan of taking three flights in a day. He finally called his supervisor, who came around and pulled me to one side. The supervisor was far more switched on, and after I explained to him the craziness of ARN-LHR-NRT being cheaper than LHR-NRT, he finally said “Well, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why we shouldn’t let you in!” and told the original officer to stamp my passport. This was by far the most grief I have ever gotten at a passport control before (what exactly did they expect me to be doing anyway? Illegally enter a country that I don’t need a visa for??). I was actually pretty scared during the delay as to what could happen. Anyway, phew.
After that particular drama, I went to the landside check-in desks which was quite hectic, used a self check-in machine which spat out my boarding pass back to LHR, and I made my way through the Fast Track security into the airside section. I then made another mistake of going through passport control back into the International pier too soon, since there was no lounge in that pier and I had over an hour to kill. The ARN experience was fast beginning to be pretty lousy (and I wasn’t going through the passport controls yet again just to use a lounge!) so I did a bit of typing in a cafe and waited for my flight to board. 20 minutes before STD, the boarding was called (there was priority boarding this time) and I boarded the same aircraft that I arrived into ARN (I’ve never done this before!) although the crew were different.
Most savvy FTers who are familiar with Star Alliance will have no doubt heard about BMI’s amazing Miles & Cash redemption, where you can get a roundtrip in First Class from Zone 2 Europe to North Asia for a mere 50,000 miles plus £340 cash. Quite frankly, it’s simply the best offer possible, and after accumulating 20,000 miles and buying the rest, I was able to take advantage of it. I specifically wanted to use it at least once before the big bad Lufthansa gets its hands on Diamond Club and abolish the only good thing going for it!
So, day after day of poring through the ANA tool ensued for about 3 weeks, and eventually I settled on going to Japan for 6 days then going back home to Korea for 3 weeks. In order to start the journey in Zone 2, it was necessary to position myself there in the first place, and I redeemed a separate, very cheap M&C booking to get me to ARN. I contemplated staying for a few days in ARN, but actually decided to just do a same-day turnaround in the end, since I didn’t fancy travelling around alone that time.
Pre-flight
Like most of my trips back home, it invariably began with staying up all night. I should have concentrated more on packing and tidying up the night before, but instead I chose to spend almost the entire evening watching TV and talking to my housemate, which meant that it was 1am by the time I actually lifted a finger.
So, I spent the night tidying up and packing for the trip. But then I had a major scare regarding my plans – my rather insane plan, of LHR-ARN, ARN-LHR and then LHR-NRT all in the same day, basically relied on both European segments being more or less on time. Being used to the intercontinental flights that are almost invariably on time, it never occurred to me that European flights might be any different… that is, until I checked the Flightstats website. There, I found some very disconcerting information such as the average delay for that flight (45mins – which sounds not too bad, until you realise my connection in ARN was only 1h15m) and also the flight back, which wasn’t any better. Then it dawned upon me that if the worst case scenario should happen, I could potentially end up missing my LHR-NRT flight, which would be just too disastrous for words.
After all this, my previously relaxed and anticipating outlook for the day changed to one of anxiety with regards to the connection problems. I headed on time to Heathrow on the bus, which took only slightly longer than usual considering that I was travelling on a Monday during peak hours. Having not slept a single hour during the night, I zonked out for the first hour of the 1h40m journey then spent the next 40 minutes still worrying about the connections – it started feeling less and less like a good idea every time I thought about the worst case scenario. And I had no travel insurance. Bummer.
SK526 LHR ARN STD 1035 STA 1405
MD-80, Seat 21A
It was roughly 8:30am when I reached the SAS check-in desks, after depositing my bag at the left luggage for the day to collect when I came back to LHR to check-in for my NRT flight. Then I headed to the SAS check-in desks where, as I only had hand luggage, I just keyed in my PNR into the self check-in machine spat out a boarding pass for my pre-assigned seat, 21A. The boarding pass was strange as it had no perforation for the gate agent to rip the larger part – instead, it was just one large piece of cardboard and had a barcode, which I presumed will be scanned to register the passenger at the gate.
Once I cleared the security, I tried to go to the Singapore Airlines Silver Kris lounge based on my later LHR-NRT flight in First Class, but the agent was quite adamant that I needed a boarding pass, not just a PNR printout with the e-ticket numbers. Off I went to the ANA transfer desks, where apparently they will only open around 4:30pm – useless. So obviously the Silver Kris lounge was going to be out of bounds, but what about the SAS London Lounge? After spending 10 minutes trying to explain just what I’m doing today (she really looked confused… as would I, if anyone else was trying to explain such a crazy routing) she eventually gave up trying to make sense of it, and just let me in anyway. Thank goodness, because I was beginning to get really sweaty and was quite frankly desperate for a shower. The shower was decent enough, and the hot water was reliable, and I emerged 30 minutes later in a considerably better state than before. The rest of the time in the lounge was spent just using the internet and having a glass of orange juice – standard stuff really.
Fairly soon, it was time to board the SAS flight to Stockholm. I went to the gate, which was quite close to the London Lounge, where they hadn’t started boarding the flight, and the holding pen was pretty full up. Within 10 minutes they started boarding the flight, with no reference to priority boarding so everyone just stood up at once to board and I was one of the first to find my way down the corridor towards the MD-80 aircraft. I’ve flown it before (also on SAS) but overall I was quite surprised at the age of the aircraft, which was visibly quite old. Not quite “held together by duct-tape” old, but you just feel that it has been around for a while.
I chose 21A based on the description on the SAS internet check-in website as being “emergency exit – extra legroom” and I was not disappointed. It must have been a good 36-37” of legroom and I was glad to be able to stretch out and essentially fall asleep for the entire flight until 20 minute before landing, when I was awake enough to realise that – being in Economy Class – I was expected to buy orange juice or coffee, and instead quietly observed the landing into Stockholm.
The legroom in Row 21 - not bad!
“Nobody understands me!”
We landed uneventfully into Stockholm and I made my way into the terminal – the terminal had a very old and depressing feel to it (not at all helped by the fact that it was close to being a ghost-town), and just felt much less “Scandinavian” than, say, CPH airport.
I walked towards the transfer counters where there was no-one available, so I naturally think to myself, “I have a ticket that leaves here, I need a boarding pass, so I should just go to the landside check-in counters and come back in”. What a bad choice this turned out to be.
The passport control officer was completely baffled by my itinerary (LHR-ARN, a 1-hour stop, then ARN-LHR, then LHR-NRT the same day) and seemed worryingly close to refusing me entry to Sweden. I did my best to explain, but he just couldn’t seem to understand even after 15 minutes, during which time I was yet again lamenting my own ambitious plan of taking three flights in a day. He finally called his supervisor, who came around and pulled me to one side. The supervisor was far more switched on, and after I explained to him the craziness of ARN-LHR-NRT being cheaper than LHR-NRT, he finally said “Well, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why we shouldn’t let you in!” and told the original officer to stamp my passport. This was by far the most grief I have ever gotten at a passport control before (what exactly did they expect me to be doing anyway? Illegally enter a country that I don’t need a visa for??). I was actually pretty scared during the delay as to what could happen. Anyway, phew.
After that particular drama, I went to the landside check-in desks which was quite hectic, used a self check-in machine which spat out my boarding pass back to LHR, and I made my way through the Fast Track security into the airside section. I then made another mistake of going through passport control back into the International pier too soon, since there was no lounge in that pier and I had over an hour to kill. The ARN experience was fast beginning to be pretty lousy (and I wasn’t going through the passport controls yet again just to use a lounge!) so I did a bit of typing in a cafe and waited for my flight to board. 20 minutes before STD, the boarding was called (there was priority boarding this time) and I boarded the same aircraft that I arrived into ARN (I’ve never done this before!) although the crew were different.
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