British Airways Galleries Club Lounge at Terminal 5A London Heathrow

Last year, I accepted a status challenge from American Airlines. I went to Hong Kong for Labor Day weekend, and the miles earned from that one trip was enough to attain AA Platinum status through 2017.  One of the benefits of this status was lounge access on One World flights.

My August Italy trip was on British Airways. AA Platinum status translates to Sapphire One World status, which entitled my guest and me to use BA’s Galleries (Business) Club Lounges. We flew overnight from New York JFK to London Heathrow, and then on to Rome Fuciamo Airport. We had about an hour between flights so it was great to have a lounge to stop in at.

The BA Galleries Lounge at LHR, Terminal 5A was clean and bright fairly spacious. There were two areas: one area had food and plenty of table seating and another area was more formal with upholstered couches and chairs.

I was happy to see a decent selection of fresh-cut fruit and fruit salads and yogurt. That has been really important to me, as I’m on a low carb diet.

There were also plenty of pastries and breakfast sandwiches, which looked good (but I didn’t eat!).

The pain au chocolat was tempting.

There was also an assortment of cereal and fresh fruits,

as well as juices and sodas.

It was morning, so I opted for coffee . . .

and sparkling soda.

For the planespotters amongst us, there was an entire glass window to watch planes taking off and landing.

And then it was time to catch our flight to Rome. In the interim, however, they’d changed the terminal for our connecting flight and we had to run to catch our flight.  Another lesson learned.