British Airways launched its new service to St Louis, Missouri, in April 2o26. They fly four times a week (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays) during the summer timetable. This seemed like an odd choice, given that St Louis city centre is like a ghost town and there has been a massive population decline in the city. However, the surrounding areas are doing well economically, and Greater St. Louis is home to multiple Fortune 500 companies. I was in town for a wedding after my honeymoon, so it made sense to fly back with British Airways using Avios and a companion voucher. It costs 76,000 Avios plus £704 for 2 people one way.
In this post:
Check-in
The airport is around 20-30 minutes (14 miles) from downtown St Louis. There is either the Metrolink train that takes a bit longer but directly serves the airport or taxi/Uber. The cost was around $45.
First impressions were that the airport felt small, but it did seem fairly modern. The check-in area for BA is very small, but the Club check-in was quiet when we arrived. If everyone arrived at once, the area would be very crowded. There is no fast-track security, and security here was extremely slow. Even the TSA PreCheck had a long line and seemed to take forever.
The lounge
To be fair to BA, there is only one lounge at this terminal, so it’s not like they had a choice. However, with a flight leaving fairly late at 9.40pm, you would hope that there was enough food to have some sort of a meal before boarding if you wanted to sleep.
To find the lounge, after TSA Security, turn left. At the end of the terminal hallway (near Gate E22), turn left. The lounge is located opposite Gate E29.
First impressions were not good, as there was a long wait to get in, and some family in front were arguing with the front desk about getting into the lounge. The lounge agent was less than welcoming when we got to the front of the queue. I noticed a menu with prices on it and a couple of dishes to order at the front desk, which did not bode well. There was no sign of this menu once in the lounge.
When we arrived, the lounge was busy, and there were hardly any free seats. It is a pretty small lounge, so this is not surprising. There is a bar to one side with stools and then some dining tables and individual booths for working.
Further into the lounge was a seating area which was also very busy. Other than that, there was a small buffet and not much else. It did at least have plenty of natural daylight.
To say the buffet was disappointing was being generous. It consisted of some lettuce with cheese, bacon and dressing; some plain ham and cheese sandwiches and some cookies. This is probably the worst long-haul lounge I have visited with BA. I know there is only one lounge, but could BA not allow people to order one à la carte dish each, or offer better food? Our flight was delayed by an hour, which made it worse, so we ended up paying for a snack elsewhere to keep us going.
The only good thing about the lounge was the bar, which had a friendly bartender and a decent range of drinks. However, not all of them were included. Premium drinks were extra, but I managed to get a decent Margarita.
Boarding
We arrived at the gate on time and then sat there for around an hour, waiting for BA to sort out some sort of problem on board. The gate staff did make a few announcements during this time to keep us updated. When they did start boarding, they used the usual trick of inviting group 1 to board, then almost immediately inviting groups 2 and 3, creating something of a scrum.
I was offered a choice between “champagne” and orange juice before takeoff. I chose the champagne and wished I hadn’t. It was not only awful, but it was very warm too. I don’t know if they use something different here before take-off, as some places have cheaper fizz for pre-departure drinks.
At the seat was the usual White Company bedding and amenity kit, as well as a bottle of water and headphones.
The White Company kit has the usual contents as below. These are being replaced with new amenity kits this month.
The seat and cabin
We chose seats 2D and 2F in the middle. The Club cabins consist of one larger cabin at the front and a mini cabin behind. I chose row 2 so as not to be right by the galley and also to get served fairly quickly. The bassinet positions are in the mini cabin, so they may not be the best place for peace and quiet, given there is also a galley and toilets at the back too.
The seats are the standard suites with doors, which I generally find comfortable and with plenty of storage.
There are three main storage areas plus a magazine rack on top, which you could put a small laptop in after takeoff. The small head-height cabinet has a handy mirror and is perfect for amenity kits and headphones. Then there are two under the shelf. The larger one also has sockets and a remote control, plus a smaller, shallow storage area for items like phones and wallets.
The seat is simple to control with the touchscreen, and I like that you can adjust the legrest as well as the recline. There are also resets for bed mode and landing/take-off.
The middle seats have a screen if you are travelling solo or just fed up with your travel companion! I like the design that you can just simply slide it back and forth rather than having a motorised screen that often fail and make a noise when you raise or lower them.
We both slept well in the seats.
Food and drink
I had fairly low expectations for the food given it was from a new, smaller outstation and judging by my previous BA Club experiences. However, I have to say I had to literally eat my words! If you didn’t want the full meal and were in a hurry, you can have the goodnight service, which is a starter and dessert with a drink.
Here is the food menu:
And the wine and drinks:
I actually thought this was a pretty good wine list too. Rock Angel is not to my taste but it is a decent premium wine and one you don’t often see on aircraft. It was also good to see a Grüner Veltliner, which is one of my personal favourites and a crowd-pleaser. It was annoying that they had given up on brandy completely, as this felt wrong for a business-class service. I also think some new cocktails are long overdue. The current ones are very basic and have been around for many years.
To start, I went with the beef, which was a very generous-sized portion and also came with an antipasto-style salad and some herb bread. It tasted fresh with the beef not overdone and a nice level of spice. We both really enjoyed this.
For the main, I went with the prawns and was pleased to see a good amount of prawns, which were not overcooked. Again, this was tasty, but it needed far, far more sauce than the tiny, dried-up dribble it came with.
After this amount of food, I was well and truly stuffed, so I went with a Baileys hot chocolate as a nightcap.
The crew were efficient and reasonably friendly so I was happy with the service onboard.
Breakfast was disappointing in size and lack of choice. Given that it’s a late flight and people may choose to have dinner before the flight to sleep, I think they could do better. If you don’t like or eat bacon, you are out of luck. The bacon ciabatta was absolutely delicious with the tomato jam, but you think they would stretch to giving you a whole one! It also came with a muffin and blueberry chia pudding.
Entertainment and connectivity
The TV was a good size, with good picture quality and a wide selection of recent TV shows and movies. The remote could be a bit better. I find the touchscreen remotes lag a bit despite being otherwise user-friendly.
If you wanted to charge devices, there was a USB socket and a multi-country plug socket in the storage area.
This was one of the first aircraft to be fitted with Starlink, which is both free and very fast. Despite my concerns about people making video calls (which is now allowed by BA, which I think is a mistake), luckily no one did on this night flight.
If you miss the announcement, you can tell it’s Starlink by the Wi-fi name BA Starlink. As you can see from the speed test, it was fast and very easy to connect to.
Arrival
We managed to make up some time and arrived 45 minutes late. We had been planning to check out the arrivals lounge, but as we were late and it was not that long until it closed, we decided to give it a miss. I was pleased to see the baggage tracking actually working, as it rarely has on my previous trips. It did take a while (35 minutes from touchdown) to show the carousel number, but it is good to see it and know when your bags are delivered so you can look out for them.
Conclusion
With all the Executive Club changes and some First bookings, it had been a while since I had flown BA Club. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food, wine and service. Having Starlink is a definite big bonus. However, St Louis airport was subpar on almost every measure, especially the lounge, so I would not be rushing back to travel from there unless I absolutely had to.
I flew with Virgin Atlantic outbound on this trip, so I’ll be comparing how they fared against BA in the next review.
1 comment
As someone who has been flying at least annually from London to St Louis for the past forty years, the new direct service by BA is an absolute Godsend! Many years ago, TWA used to fly direct from Gatwick to St Louis. It was extremely popular and successful, but disappeared with American Airlines. Since then, connecting with the AA/BA transatlantic flights from Chicago to London has been something of a nightmare over the past decade with a litany of late, cancelled or missed flights. By coincidence, or grandson has just flown over from St Louis on the BA flight this week and has nothing but praise for BA in introducing this service. The BA service is currently one of a very few truly international flights from St Louis and the business facilities clearly need to “catch-up”. (There is a good American Airlines business lounge by C Gates which I would hope would accept BA business travellers).