Day 1: Home to Phoenix

We really enjoyed our USA road trip in 2022 and knew that one day we'd want to return and do something similar again. We visited five national parks last time but there were still so many amazing places we hadn't seen, most notably Yellowstone. Yellowstone had been part of our original itinerary for 2022, but we ended up having to change our route at short notice after some horrendous flooding washed away one of the key roads into the park. We spent a few days in Idaho instead, an experience which we definitely enjoyed but nevertheless didn't quite compare to what we originally had planned. I was particularly gutted because I had spent hours researching Yellowstone and planning our route around it; not an insignificant feat when you consider that the national park is approximately the same size as Cyprus. I was adamant that one day we were going to return and I was going to get to use my itinerary

The Points Pay Off

Around this time last year we started looking at flights in a BA end-of-summer sale and realised that it was possible to fly directly from Heathrow to Phoenix. After our experience trying Qatar business class back from Doha last summer, we were quite keen to try it again on a longer route. At close to 11 hours, Heathrow to Phoenix is definitely a long route! And business class tickets are definitely not cheap. But my new-found hobby of collecting air miles meant that we had just enough points to get one return journey for free, meaning that we only had to pay for one ticket. That one ticket cost £2,400 – which is obviously still a lot – but only £1,200 each, which is effectively what it would have cost us each to fly return in economy anyway. When we flew from Dublin to Raleigh in 2022, my return flight on Aer Lingus cost £1,300 and Aer Lingus messed us around quite a lot with delays and cancellations, to the point where I ended up having to make a complaint to the regulator once I got home to encourage them to pay some compensation we were owed. I was hopeful that flying business class with BA was going to be a more positive experience!

The journey certainly got off to a very civilised start by the standards of our holidays, as the flight wasn't until 15.40. That meant we didn't have our typical early morning drive to the airport, instead leaving home some time around 10am. The downside of a later flight was that there was more traffic on the motorways than there normally is at 3am, but despite a few random traffic jams we made it down to the airport parking at Heathrow by 12.30.

Stress-Free Pre-Flight

Checking in for business class was a very pleasant experience; there are separate check-in desks, so we barely had to queue for more than a few minutes. Very different from when we flew Wizzair back from Istanbul earlier in the year and queued at check-in for over an hour! Our boarding passes entitled us to use the fast-track security lane, which was very smooth, and in no time at all we were sitting in the BA lounge.

It took discipline not to get carried away. Fortunately for Tim, a man to whom sipping does not come naturally, the Lounge offered alcohol-free beer, which meant that he could still indulge.

The lounge was really lovely and slightly classier than Wetherspoons at Stansted, which is where a lot of our holidays have historically started  We were torn between making the most of the free food and drink and not having too much of the free food and drink, because we would also be getting food and drink on the plane. I started with a cup of coffee, while Tim went to investigate the food buffet and reported back that it was all quite edible, with a choice between chicken curry and cheesy pasta. I sometimes find the food on the plane too posh to eat, so decided to have some pasta now to be on the safe side. We also sampled a little bit of the wine and prosecco and had some amazing lemon drizzle cake. Tim had a scone with jam and cream, plus utilised some of the free crisps. 

Time flew by and soon it was time to board the plane. It was a huge plane!

We were sitting behind each other rather than next to each other this time, which was nice as it meant we both had window seats, though did make communication slightly more difficult.

We were served a welcome drink of champagne between boarding and take-off, then a cranberry cocktail once the fasten seat-belt sign had been switched off.

Meh-nu!

Soon it was time for the (first!) meal service and the flight attendant came round to ask for our choices. As I mentioned earlier, my main problem with flying business class is that the food is too adventurous for me  I decided I was going to have to pass on a starter, then choose the chicken as the least-bad main course option. 

Tim was slightly more adventurous and went for the tuna tonnato to start, although I think it's fair to say that he did not really enjoy it once it arrived.

The bread was nice!

The chicken main course was actually fine, if you concentrated on the chicken breast and ignored everything else.

Pudding was sticky toffee, which was very nice indeed ...

... and to finish it off we got coffee and biscuits, which was also great.

Seeing an Old Friend

As you can see from the pictures with the route map, the plane had flown north across the UK initially, before flying south of Iceland and heading towards the southern tip of Greenland. The meal service had finished and most of the other passengers in business class seemed to have decided to go to sleep, when Tim alerted me to a view outside the window.

It had been quite a cloudy journey until this point, but there were no clouds over Greenland today!

We flew over ice and glaciers ...

... and saw big fjords down below.

Southern Greenland is actually the least icy part of Greenland, and so not all of the mountains were snow-covered.

I was particularly excited to fly over this bit of Greenland because we'd originally been due to visit the south during our 2023 trip, something which ultimately didn't happen due to a series of weather-related flight cancellations.

The views from the plane were incredible – such an amazing experience

I think we were lucky to get a glimpse of Greenland today because just as we were coming to the edge of the coast, the cloud cover began moving in again.

The plane ultimately then flew across Canada, but we didn't really see anything through the cloud. Tim ordered us another cocktail.

It was only really during the final two hours of the flight when we started flying over the USA that we were able to get a view. 

At this point we were having the second meal service. I chose gnocchi, which was actually genuinely really nice. Tim had a chicken tikka pie, which also sounded good. It was technically about midnight in the UK by this point so an odd time to eat dinner, but it was such a long flight that time had lost all meaning  

The USA from above

As we ate we flew over Grand Teton National Park, which we visited back in 2022.

We're not 100% sure, but slightly later we flew over a large urban area next to an even larger lake; we think it must have been Salt Lake City in Utah.

We were over Utah, and there's only one huge lake and conurbation in that spot ...

Within the final half an hour or so of the flight, we flew over a large canyon.

It was quite cloudy so again I'm not 100% sure – could this have been the Grand Canyon?

It's right where the Grand Canyon should be ... and if it isn't the real thing, then we've discovered an imposter!

Touchdown!

We landed in Phoenix at 18.42 local time, which was 02.42 on Sunday morning for our UK body clocks.

Now we had the most nerve-wracking part of any US trip; getting through immigration! It turned out to be a breeze  Another benefit of business class is that you're one of the first off the plane and so there wasn't any queue at all when we got to the desks. We got the friendliest passport control guard ever – definitely a lot friendlier than recent experiences I've had in Helsinki and Berlin! – and we were through in no time at all. There followed quite a long wait for our luggage which had an extra frisson of excitement added by the fact that we kept hearing announcements over the tannoy that there had been a problem with a luggage belt at Heathrow, resulting in 70 bags failing to be loaded onto the plane   Luckily our bags were not included in that 70 and they did eventually emerge onto the baggage carousel. We walked through customs and then we were officially in Phoenix. (As you can probably tell, I was quite tired by this point!)

The final challenge was to get to our hotel. As it had been a long day, I'd booked us a hotel near the airport but Phoenix airport is absolutely huge and "near" was actually quite a few miles away. The hotel was supposed to have a free shuttle but I didn't have any details of how often it ran and it wasn't obvious when we stepped outside the airport. We ended up taking a taxi, which cost $18. I think we offended the taxi driver by not tipping on top of that.

When we got to the hotel we found we had a really big, spacious room.

It was about 8pm in Phoenix by this point but 4am in the morning back in the UK. We unpacked a few essentials, then went straight to sleep with the alarm set for 7am on Sunday morning. As you may have gathered from the cover photo of this blog, we have quite an adventurous itinerary planned for the next two weeks!