Globaliser

And even if you're connecting to a UK flight, you should be able to use the immigration clearance point in the flight connections stream (as opposed to the normal immigration channel for those ending their journeys at Heathrow), which is usually rather less busy.

That's simply wrong. There are plenty of occasions when gate-checking decisions are made after the carry-on bags have made it on board, when it's discovered that there are more bags than will fit into the overhead bins, so some bags then have to be taken off again and checked into the hold. Sometimes, there's no space in the bins because smaller bags have taken up the space. So yes, if you always put your small bags into the bin, you could cause someone else's bag to have to be gate-checked. But hopefully, if the small bags are your only cabin bags, then you'll be on flights where there isn't that much pressure on space. I don't fly UA very much, but on the airline I fly most (BA), if the bins have got full then passengers with small bags will be made to put them under the seat in front of them to maximise the amount of bin space for other bags (because small bags are often a very inefficient use of that space). And you might want to remember that CCers like FlyerTalker are not simply posting arguments based on logic (silly or otherwise). It's from real-life experience. Those of us who fly a lot have seen (almost) everything.

They're not "switching" anything so far as the fare is concerned. You pay the premium economy fare from your origin to your destination. You're never paying a separate fare for the short-haul flight, so there's nothing to switch.

You will probably be paying a premium economy fare for all of the travel in each direction; the domestic connecting flights are usually not charged as a separate fare. So if the premium economy fare that you're buying is refundable, then it's refundable. In this situation, there is no question of you paying any sort of MCE fare, even though that's where you might be seated on the shorter flights. Trying a dummy booking on the AA website now, I see a notice at the top of the page with the firm fare quote (after you've selected seats) that says: << You have a mix of fares The rule of the most restrictive fare will apply. >> That seems to be clear enough? This only matters if your outbound travel and inbound travel are on fares with rules that are truly different from each other. Often there will technically be different fares in each direction because (for example) it's weekend travel in one direction but midweek travel in the other, but actually all the fare rules are identical. To check this, go to the bottom of that page and click the link for "Detailed fare rules". That should bring up a page that gives you the fare basis code for the fare in each direction, together with a selection of the most important fare rules for each of them. These include the "Penalties" section, which will tell you how refundable the fare is (or isn't). I don't know what AA means by "fully refundable" as opposed to "refundable", but my guess is that "fully refundable" gives you everything back if you cancel, but "refundable" means that there will be a cancellation fee and then you get the rest refunded. Of course, it's difficult to be sure about any of this unless we know exactly what you're looking at so we can see what rules are involved.

It doesn't. But the size of that space basically dictates the maximum measurements for the "personal item", so that it can fit in the space.

The plural of anecdote is not data. PHX is neither LOS nor MRU. And the NAP incident demonstrates that incidents could happen even to a local airline at PHX on a short-haul aircraft. Your proposition is that BA could find it more difficult to respond to a maintenance problem at PHX than a local airline would, because it's an airline based a long way away. The suggestion is that this is a potential reason for thinking that BA might be less dependable. That might be true if BA would have to ship in engineers and parts from London to fix the broken aircraft. But that's not how it would work. And that just looks at the aircraft side of the situation. For the OP's route, the commercial position is that BA is not a separate airline from AA. There is one joing business that one might call "AA-AY-BA-IB", so the OP would have the commercial protection of knowing that there are many other ways of getting to their destination - similar to the position if they were flying entirely within the network of another airline.

I think you're being unfair. NCL should have emailed the OP to tell him to read his emails.

Then you are not understanding the point. On your logic, BA's performance at PHX would have been abysmal when it was operating 747s there (many of them pretty old by then), because AA didn't operate 747s at PHX (or at all) and it would take a long time for BA to get trained personnel and parts over from London or wherever to fix problems. It didn't happen like that, because the industry doesn't work like that.

BA didn't do badly at PHX when it was flying 747s there. Somehow, someone managed to fix all the problems. How long is it since AA last operated a 747?

About which we shouldn't speculate without knowledge. Not least is the fact that one contract is the Joint Business Agreement between AA and BA (and others): the trans-Atlantic operation is basically a joint venture. Anyway, following the "only one flight is with the 777" logic would lead one to avoid flying BA to places where the native airlines don't operate these types at all. Yet I couldn't count the number of times that I've seen "SAA maintenance" hi-viz jackets visiting the flight decks of BA 747s and 380s at JNB, when they were types that SAA has either never operated, or not operated for very many years.

But the OP may not. It's a significant consideration when choosing between a T5 hotel, a T2 hotel or a T4 hotel, especially when arriving late in the evening.

Open this PDF map of Terminal 3, and go to page 5 (Arrivals, Ground floor). You exit from Customs through the arrivals shop, which is number 3 (marked "World Duty Free", although it isn't a duty-free shop), and cross into the public area at the dotted orange line. WHSmith is number 14, in the row of shops towards the bottom of the page.

I think that Charing Cross Road southbound (which would be the most obvious road route from Tottenham Court Road Tube to the hotel) is buses and cycles only, so cabs and minicabs (like Ubers) won't be available along there. I can't remember off the top of my head where the Tottenham Court Road lifts may tip you out at street level, but it will be worth remembering this. If you do end up on that street, you'll need to cross to the northbound side and then expect to have to do some loops to head down towards Trafalgar Square. Alternatively, if the locations of lifts allow, get a cab on either Oxford Street or on Tottenham Court Road southbound (ie north of Oxford Street). They will still have to avoid the bus lane on Charing Cross Road, but this will probably be a bit quicker. A further alternative entirely is to take the Piccadilly Line to Green Park, and get a cab from there. Step-free exit to street level, no bus lane constraints, and a drive past St James's Palace followed by a glimpse of Buckingham Palace along The Mall. I do like the OP's optimism about the chances of finding a native Londoner here on CC!

This is not quite so convenient for the OP, who's arriving at T5. They would have to take a train to Heathrow Central, and then change for a different train to T4. The trains go in opposite directions through the station, so it's not a same-platform change (although the walk between the platforms is not long and is level).

I've had a similar issue at my own bank when trying to do this, which may explain the problem. The bank would not do a straight exchange. I had to pay the larger denomination notes into my account, and then make a cash withdrawal paid out in smaller notes. This is probably why a bank won't do this unless you have an account.

Aircraft seats differ little from route to route. If the airline says that 17 x 10 x 9 inches should fit, then it should fit regardless of the route. There's nothing special in this respect about international flights or flights to Europe - the space under the seat in front doesn't magically increase just because the aircraft's going to a different place.

As a rule of thumb, you should be able to stow any bag that fits within the "personal item" dimensions. For UA, it looks like this is 17 x 10 x 9 inches. As the website says, "These items must fit under the seat in front of you. Common things include purses, backpacks and laptop bags." The general philosophy is that if you choose to take both a wheelie and a "personal item", the wheelie is to go into the overhead bin and the "personal item" is to go under the seat in front of you.

They're very common, but many businesses set up arrangements to take debit card payments instead of (or in addition to) electronic transfers - even for business-to-business transactions. Many people (including me) prefer using a debit card because of the amount of authorised push payment fraud that exists. Debit cards give you a level of security about the destination of the funds; if you've made an electronic transfer to the wrong person, whether by accident or because of fraud, it can be very hard to recover the money.

It's not feasible because from Southampton, you'd basically drive past Heathrow and then for a further hour into London before driving half-way back to Southampton (from a time point of view). Between 9 am and 1 pm, you simply don't have the time.

London is not "along the way" from Southampton (note spelling) to Heathrow. This idea is not feasible. If you want to stop between Southampton and Heathrow, you could look at Winchester or Salisbury, or possibly even Stonehenge.

Similar considerations originally led to big supermarkets starting the "cashback" facility, in the days when many people still used cash for lots of things: if you paid for your shopping using a debit card, the supermarket would offer you the option of taking out some cash at the same time, with that amount added to the debit card charge. The supermarket was basically offering to be an ATM. The supermarket paid a flat fee to the bank for the debit card transaction, so offering cashback to the customer didn't cost it any more money than it was already going to pay. But - crucially - it got a lot of cash off the premises again in their customers' pockets, so that it reduced the supermarket's cash handling costs. For operations of that size, it was more than bank charges: the cost of secure transit for large amounts of cash was significant. Those who thought that this was an innovation designed for the benefit of the customer were no doubt buying bridges too. But those were the days when using a card to pay for anything less than £10 got you looked at like you had two heads. These days, using a card to pay for a 10p transaction is considered normal.

I have never seen this anywhere, either. It's possible that El Al does or has in the past applied such a rule, but it's the only airline I can think of that might.

Mind the gap!

Off the top of my head, I think that in economy you can always pre-allocate a seat for a fee, even if you're travelling on a Basic fare. I expect that most cruise passengers would probably find that a Basic fare isn't particularly good value because it doesn't include any checked baggage so there's a fee for that too. A Standard fare would include one checked bag, which most cruise passengers would probably need/want. There are quite a lot of BA business class fares that also don't include free pre-allocated seating (for those who don't get that via have frequent flyer status). But on these fares you can also pre-allocate for a fee, and you will be able to allocate your own seat for free when check-in opens.

For context, the TWA Hotel is a "pretty cool spot" in the sense that I have (briefly) considered flying to NYC just to stay in it. I think this is a great idea.