Currently sitting in the Concorde Room thanks to the inbound leg in First and a connection up to Edinburgh having had a very pleasant flight from Rio. Best sleep on an airplane I’ve ever had! Sadly no photos from the front of the plane. It was a full 14 passenger’s complement this time.

We took off almost an hour late, no idea why, so dinner was served after midnight! But I had salad and biscuits and cheese, then slept. Woke up and had brunch before landing at 1330.

Relatively trouble free trip through passport control until we got to security before heading to the lounge. I had removed all toiletries items from the cabin luggage – except my perfume. Needless to say the bag was side-lined and a few on lookers were subjected to the contents.

However – returning to the boarding pass saga in Brazil.

We were assured by the lounge staff in Rio that the BA staff would either bring our passes up to the lounge, or we would get them at the gate. We waited somewhat anxiously then, with no sign but lots of assurances, made our way to the gate only to find a huge queues of passengers! So why did they call us? Anyway, we were in the First queue and spotted a passing BA person and asked her about our passes, to which she looked aghast’ ‘You have no pass?’ She suggested we go to a different gate and talk to staff there. Admittedly, one BA gentleman did seem to have some knowledge of our predicament, but wanted to check our luggage tags again (presumably to check they were ticketed all the way to EDI) and sent info off to someone else to check our bags were on the plane. There was a general flap about it all, but a quick check of passports and a press of his printer, spat out our Rio to LHR, and LHR to EDI passes. We were first on the plane!

I am sure there are lessons to be learned I will ALWAYS print out my passes, even if it means getting up ridiculously early. I feel that BA and the airport need to work out how we got into departures without boarding passes – I suspect a complete failure by ground staff to follow correct procedures through not having an appropriately senior person who understood and could communicate to transiting passengers, but also a review of signage. It was diabolical. There will be chaos later in the year with the Olympics!