[Anonymous]

[TominScotland]

I have just flown Yangon to Bangkok with Bangkok Airways, prior to connecting onwards with BA to Heathrow. This is not one of BA’s code share routes with PG but nonethless does offer fairly seamless connectivity. I negotiated Yangon’s traffic with U Aung, my wonderful taxi driver for much of the past two weeks, and arrived at the modern International Terminal in very good time. The queue for check in was quite long and this was not helped by incredibly protracted check-in procedures. I checked my bag through to Glasgow and received boarding passes for all three flights, which was good.

I then made my way up through Immigration and into the Departures area which was full of Burmese craft stalls, amazingly selling jade and other souvenirs at less that a quarter of the prices charged in shops in the city. As I had no lounge access, I meandered departures in order to find the spot with the strongest free wifi and settled down to some work.

The gate area was downastairs and I could see the inbound arrive in good time. I made my way down there once arriving passengers had de-planned. We were called forward in good time, with most passengers ignoring announcements about premium passengers and boarding by seat row numbers. Still, the plane was by no means full and my own seat, 9C, gave me a free seat on the inside and good leg room.

We pushed back a few minutes late, despite early boarding and took off into quite lively turbulence. However, things settled down once we were at cruising altitude and dinner service began – a tasty looking prawn curry was the main which I did not try. Drinks were also offered – soft, wine and tea/ coffee. Cabin crew were friendly and very helpful – although there was no tax free shopping run, I had been asked to buy a specific item and requested this from one of the crew. It was delivered without any hassle and with apologies that they only accepted cash.

We landed a few minutes late and taxied for a very long time before reaching the remote stand area. Disembarkation onto a bus was followed by another tour of the airport after which I was able to make my way through transit security to the BA Lounge and a wait for my onward flight.

A good service and a good partner for BA. Pity about the lack of a code share and the Avios that would have resulted.

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