Boss, BOSS, de plane! De plane! Our bmi A330 arrives in from Manchester, a little late, but otherwise in one piece, and makes for the gate adjacent to the lounge,

Boarding calls in the lounge were somewat delayed, generating the usual angst amongst other passengers that we may have been forgotten about, and, indeed, even uber-flyer Willard felt the need to poke his furry snout round the door to see how bording was progressing, and found that it had nearly finished, so we beat the general boarding announcement by about 5 minutes, and so Willard took the opportunity to take a quick peek to see where the old business class seats had gone, and found them just behind us in the New (Premium) Economy cabin. Willard thinks that these seats will make a long haul economy flight much more bear-able - such a shame that in a few months, bmi won't have any long haul routes any more! (and no, Nigel, Egypt and Tel-Aviv are not long haul from the UK, they're mid-haul!)

After his quick sight-seeing tour, Willard gets back to our seat in business class, at the back of the cabin this time, and so we have the advertised 15" seatback LCD for our IFE.

As boarding progressed, Willard became increasingly excited, as the seat next to us remained free, and it looked like, for the first flight in a very long time, the famed Gold Card seat blocking benefit would have actually worked for us. But, alas and alack, a very apologetic In-Flight Supervisor advised us that the gate staff had made a mistake, and a passenger had been upgraded from PE into the seat reserved for flight crew rest on this over 8 hour flight, so we were politely asked to accept a seat-mate for this flight, and were happy to re-acquaint ourselves with and new old friend from our outbound flight, as we said hello to the very same lady we sat next to on the way out.

Willard says goodbye to the Las Vegas strip as we taxi to our runway, and again marvels at how close the strip, and indeed the whole of Las Vegas, is to the airport.