Final Retro Livery

The last of four British Airways liveries was announced today. The Boeing 747 with registration G-CIVB has entered the spray shop in Dublin and will come back out with the Negus design which featured between 1974 to 1980. This completes the line up of the BOAC, BEA and Landor designs that have rolled out over the last month. (Fun fact, this livery was created after the BOAC and BEA companies merged to become British Airways.)

Like the other jumbo jets, this plane will sport this livery until its retirement in 2022.

Sadly for me I was hoping for the ‘Utopia' livery with the dizzying array of tailfins although I don't really know which one they would have chosen. Maybe one of the British Airways lurkers on this site can send me a print of one of them to decorate my office (wink wink)

Extra Bag Drop Machines at Heathrow

Heathrow Terminal 5 now has around 70 bag automated bag drop machines. As a perennial Gatwick user where this was first rolled out in earnest, it's been quite a great addition, and the machine even allows you to check in your hand luggage if you want to carry liquids in hold.

My biggest gripe prior to having these machines was that having a staff member process check-in baggage made queues quite slow. Hopefully frequent travellers will be able to breeze through these and maybe even have the buttons etched into muscle memory. And if there are special request I presume there will still be staffed desks for more special requests (e.g. fragile stickers).