Hello Captain! My British Airways pilot turned out to be someone I know

I booked to fly from Dublin to London Heathrow to connect to a trip to Hawaii to see friends. Who knew the British Airways pilot on my flight would be someone I know? Anyway, three days before travel, I upgraded from EuroTraveller to Club Europe for 5,750 Avios and €4.00, which I think is good value.

Due to staffing issues, Dublin Airport has been recommending people arrive at the airport 3.5 hours before departure. Not wanting to hang around that long, I arrived at 5am for my 7:30am flight. Once checked in, I sailed through Fast-Track security and was through in less than five minutes.

Greeted By The British Airways Pilot

After spending some time in the lounge, it was time to board. Walking across the tarmac, I took a few photos of the plane for this article. As I passed through the door, I noticed the Captain was standing there and he said hello to me, much to my surprise!

He had noticed me taking pictures and recognised me and it turns out it was someone I knew and hadn’t seen for years. He invited me into the cockpit for a quick chat before flight, which was quite pleasant. Both he and his colleague were very friendly!

BA831 – Dublin to London Heathrow (DUB-LHR)
12 April 2022
Airbus A319 – G-EUPU
Seat: Club Europe 1F
Departure: 07:30 Arrival: 08:45

After the brief catch up, I headed to my seat in row one, sat down and relaxed before take-off. Club Europe is pretty standard across the Airbus A319 fleet.

Soon enough everyone was on board and we were given the manual safety demonstration. Even though I have seen it hundreds of times, I always watch it as it’s respectful to the crew and sometimes there little differences to note.

Breakfast Above The Clouds

Once in the air, the on board service commenced. I was offered a choice of breakfast options and selected the Full English over the Frittata. This meal covers all the bases and since I hadn’t eaten before I left home, I was looking forward to it.

I’m happy to report that the breakfast was very nice and rather filling. All that was missing is some kind of tomato sauce / ketchup. Airlines rarely provide it and I think it would be nice to have. I mean, I’d put it on my sausages whenever eating breakfast out, so why should the air be different?

During the meal, my friend popped his head around the bulkhead to ask how the flight was going, and since I had a mouth full of food, he got a grin and a thumbs up from me. We arrived early into London Heathrow and the landing was a greaser, so the two up front knew what they were doing. Or was it the automatic pilot? 🙂

Overall Thoughts

It’s not often that I know the British Airways pilot on my flight. Not often? How about that’s the first time it’s happened in all my flying on the oneworld alliance airline.

As always, I had a very good flight in Club Europe and thoroughly enjoyed the breakfast. Nice to see the on board service within Europe return to normal.

Have you ever known a crew member on your flight before? How do you think BA are doing right now? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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