Freezing at the gate boarding British Airways – are you sure this isn’t Ryanair?

Anyone who has flown Ryanair before knows they have a super efficient boarding process. Sometimes they announce and start swiping people through before the plane has even arrived. You then wait in the elements, sometimes freezing at the gate in the wind. The last thing I expected was this to happen with British Airways, but here we are.

I was on the first leg of a journey to Skiathos in Greece. Flight times meant I needed to leave Dublin the night before, overnight near London City Airport, and then fly onwards from London City to the island the following morning.

Dublin Airport and Lounge

British Airways have recently moved to Terminal 2 at Dublin Airport and their check-in desks don’t have a baggage belt installed. At check-in, by bag was weighed, then a guy took it out a back door and put it onto a trolley. That must keep him fit! From there, it was off to the Aer Lingus lounge to relax.

After snacking a little, I waited until boarding time and headed over to the gate. Boarding commenced and we all traipsed down the stairs to the open door leading out to the tarmac.

Freezing At The Gate

There we stood for a full 15 minutes, in the howling wind, gradually freezing to death. Even though it was summer elsewhere in Europe, that never arrived in 2024 in Ireland, so it was cold!

Nobody spoke to us to advise what the hold up was, so we stood there like Ryanair passengers. No doubt business class passengers and Gold frequent flyers were happy with their priority boarding experience this day. Mercifully, after around 20 minutes of this and just before hypothermia kicked in, we were permitted to continue on our way to our plane.

BA4467 – Dublin to London City (DUB-LCY)
1 July 2024
Embraer 190 – G-LCYM
Seat: Club Europe 1A
Departure: 15:55 Arrival: 17:30

Once on board, I settled in and waited the relatively short time for everyone else to get on board. We had the safety demonstration and took to the sky.

A Light Meal Is Served

Unfortunately, British Airways CityFlyer – who operate the flights between Dublin and London City – don’t do afternoon tea like that do on the normal BA flights. That’s sad, because I really love it. Instead I had a cold salad, which comprised of pulled salmon and a potato salad.

This was washed down with a couple of glasses of Champagne, followed by some chocolate to finish. Not too shabby, but also not finger sandwiches and scones with jam and cream. Shortly enough, we landed into London City without incident.

Overall Thoughts

Nobody likes freezing at the gate, and I guess the only saving grace was that we were not standing on the tarmac in rain. It was not a particularly good experience, and they could just have either started boarding later or left us in the stairwell (very Ryanair) with the doors closed for comfort.

Regardless of the inauspicious start, the rest of the flight followed the usual pattern, with tasty food and decent service. Thank goodness for that!

Have you ever been made to wait in the weather when boarding a flight? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

Like planes? See my “Does anyone remember” series.
Flight reviews your thing? Mine are all indexed here.
Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.