Flight Report : BA 92 Toronto - London Heathrow
8 November 2025
18:05 - 06:15+1

After an enjoyable short stay in Toronto, it's time to head back to balmy London to greet winter hopefully without the snow. I did end up catching some nice fall colours in the Toronto area during my trip, and ate some really good Asian food. Other than South Asian, London can't compare to what Toronto has to offer on that front! BA flies twice a day between London Heathrow and Toronto. The flight time is a relatively short 6-7 hours, so I prefer the earlier dinner hour departure as I would reach London just after midnight Toronto time, so sleeping during the journey is not essential. Their later flight at around 10pm would be too short for a proper rest and I will arrive the next morning grumpy and tired. That one is also on a 777, which I don't prefer as the Dreamliner has better humidity controls. BA flies quite a variety of aircraft into Toronto though. I had flown in earlier on an A350. With an early snowstorm arriving soon, I was lucky to fly out when the ground was still dry. I usually take the GO bus, which is only about a half hour ride to Terminal 1. But BA flies out of Terminal 3, and these airport buses don't serve both terminals. Great planning, isn't it? This isn't massive Heathrow, so I have no idea why they can't plan an airport bus to serve both (just 2) terminals. Instead, I had to drag my suitcase up a few floors to the free terminal shuttle train. This airport really tries hard to make your airport experience awful before your journey starts. However, I considered myself lucky. Pearson Airport's train connection to downtown is out of commission for maintenance this weekend. Passengers would need to take replacement buses instead, or do the old long way - subway to the end of the line at Kipling and then a bus. It's a lot of dragging luggage around for them. For arriving passengers, I didn't see any signs within Terminal 1 showing where people should go to catch these buses, or the fact that the train is not running. From Terminal 1's station, I could already see my BA aircraft parked. This shuttle consists of individual enclosed compartments with seats on the left and right. It's just a short ride over to Terminal 3, which is used by pretty much everyone but Air Canada and its Star Alliance partners. With Toronto being such a multicultural place, there is quite a good variety of airlines here. Heading downstairs into the departures hall, it was quite busy during the late afternoon hour. There were long lines snaking out of the counters along the likes of Biman Bangladesh, and BA's zone is at the other end of the terminal with 3 counters for Club World, and 4 for the peasant classes, including bag drop. There was a small line for Club World but a staff soon came to explain why. Apparently, the systems are down and they can't check anyone in. He tried to help a few go to the kiosk and walked through a few times to update us with the bad news. However, I had attempted to use the kiosk already but couldn't get it to print a bag tag, so I needed manual intervention. I think I waited about 15 minutes for staff to be able to start checking in people again. Luckily, I arrived 2 hours before departure since getting to Terminal 3 is not an easy task to begin with so I left a bit more buffer. After sending my bag away, I headed to the end of the terminal next to Saudia's counters, where the windows open up with a grand view just next to the security entrance. There was a small line for security but my processing was delayed as a set of crew came in and went ahead of us in our lane. The machines they use here are also the old ones, so I needed to take my electronics out. There was a sign ahead of entering suggesting you put your pocket items into your bag first, a good touch to speed up the whole process. Emerging airside, it was a big duty-free shop with the typical Dubai style chocolate and local favourites such as ice wine and maple anything. The chocolate was slightly cheaper than the Lindt store in London but this price is before sales tax, so it's still better to get it at Piccadilly Circus. The Blue Jays made it to the World Series just the week prior but unfortunately lost after 7 games. Nevertheless, there was a frenzy for their products all over the city in support for the home team. Terminal 3 offers a lot more variety for plane spotters, and it's not just international airlines, but also Canadian carriers such as Westjet, Flair, Sunwing, and Air Transat. If I were to pick one airline to be the best in Canada, I would go for Porter, whose operations are mostly out of the smaller downtown airport, although in recent years they launched routes out of Pearson as well, also from Terminal 3. However, the rest of the terminal is in a fairly decrepit state. This terminal used to be more cutting edge with beautiful seats, tables, and tablets, an innovation at the time. They have refreshed their look and removed the tablets now that everyone has them. However, there was garbage everywhere from crumbs to wrappers and empty glasses. I didn't see any cleaning crews around and because many foreign airlines fly widebodies here, it's a heavily-used terminal. I had not expected passengers coming through here to be dirtier and more inconsiderate than in other airports, so I suspect it's a combination of management problems to keep this place sanitary. Boarding was timely and civilized and I wasn't in a hurry either since I sat at the front of Economy so would board last. It looked like a full flight today, which was a little surprising given it's low season and approaching winter. Each seat already had a pillow and blanket wrapped in plastic, which was a little different than the departure out of Heathrow where they got rid of the bag and use a paper wrap around the blanket instead. The headphones were missing for my entire row so we had to flag a crew member down. We settled with plenty of time to spare and pushed back slightly early for the short transatlantic crossing of just over 6 hours. The Dreamliner's engines sounded different than other aircraft and the huge windows are a big bonus even though this is an entirely night-time flight. After a long taxi, we took off towards the east and the crew soon started serving drinks. However, it didn't come with a bag of pretzels or biscuits. Dinner soon came afterwards with 2 choices. I picked the chicken with mashed potatoes option instead of the vegetarian. The chicken was wet and mushy and overall, it was a disappointing meal. Catering out of Toronto is generally a miss and Air Canada doesn't fare any better on this route either. Being a dinner hour departure, I wasn't in a hurry to force some sleep since it's still early evening Toronto time. I browsed around the IFE, which seemed to have a different interface than the A350 I flew into Toronto with. There was plenty of selection although I did have to spend some time trying to figure out how to retrieve the bookmarked shows. The flight was uneventful and fairly smooth. The lights came on an hour out of London for a snack. Similar to the inbound, it was a wrap with 2 choices of filling. The flight map was quite nice with lots of information, zoom modes, and even text showing where we are flying. There was no delay to land as it was so early in the morning. However, due to weather, we were asked to turn off all our electronics, not just flight mode, as the plane would automatically land itself. I didn't see anything unusual as we flew over London in the south and looped around for landing, but in the final minutes before touchdown, it turned so foggy I couldn't even see the ground anymore. We landed just ahead of schedule at 5:44am but stopped on the tarmac for a while before proceeding to our gate at the C pier of Terminal 5. From here on, it was a quick 2-stop train ride into the main building and a speedy exit through immigration. There was no line at all for the manual counter and my priority bag didn't take long to come out. I was air-side within half an hour of getting on the jet bridge, and it was grey out, as expected for London at this time of year. BA's crew seemed more cheerful than Air Canada and it was a pleasant, albeit full flight. The IFE selection was also bigger and I had plenty on my playlist for the entire flight. Staff were courteous and helpful when asked, which compensates for Toronto's bad catering and Terminal 3's dirty state. While they only run 2 flights a day compared to Air Canada's 3, I would pick them again if I can avoid the high-density 777.