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#237811 by phillcornish
07 Sep 2005, 21:40
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Arrived at T3 at Heathrow at 8.00am. I checked in for the flight the evening before at home on my PC and found this to be easy. I also managed to change to the last two seats left at the rear of our 747 seats 63H and 63K. Me and my partner found virgins bag drop to be smooth and we was ready to go within 20 mins. At 11.00am took the long walk to gate 42. Once we arrived at the gate I tried to see which plane we was travelling on but the gate area was jam packed with people waiting to board. I did in the end get to see Tinker Belle and I know it would have V port IFE and I jumped for joy with which every body else looked at me in amazement. It was at this point that my partner informed me that I was a plane geek. I told her thats not true, but I just spotted 3 other virgin planes on the way to the gate. (Birthday Girl, Ruby Tuesday, Cosmic Girl).



Loading of passengers was easy with no problems and I liked the fact that there seems to be more room at the rear. Pushback from the gate was at 12:10 and we taxied to long line of planes waiting for the holding point at Runway 27R. Another half of an hour later and we was rolling down the runway.
I am no expert on the 747 and this was my first 747 take off, but we used all the length of the runway, as the the wheels lifted of the runway it was gone. This was my 25th takeoff but this did scare me a little and I thought this bird must be real heavy.
(Maybe any pilots out there can enlighten me).



We finally got to cruse altitude and I settled down with the V port IFE. Well done virgin on the IFE. Dinner was the normal what I call the plane meal. Not the best food in the world but I enjoyed it so no complaints. This was my partners first long haul flight and it took me a long time to convince her to travel for 11 hours on a plane. She could not believe the amount of times the FAs came round with food/snacks and she also loved the IFE. So in the end she had a great flight.



Before we knew it we where coming in to land at LAX which was nice and smooth and we taxied to the gate. Before we got to the gate the captain informed us that there was two parked planes either side of our gate and it would be tight fitting our plane in between. It was decided that our plane was to stop, Turn off the engines and we were to be towed the last few yards with our wingtips almost touching the planes either side of us, How they will cope the A380 I will never know.
This process took a good half of an hour, but all in all the flight was good and going on the 747(VS07) was much better than the A340 (VS23) that I had travelled on a year before.

Now this is where all our problems started. I knew being at the rear of a 747 we would be at the back of a very long queue at immigration and we sure were last in the queue of 400 or so people. While we where standing in this queue which was not moving has immigration did not start to process any one yet, I started to daydream a little and never noticed that I was staring an immigration officer in the face which made me standout like a sore thumb. Over two officers came one male, one female and me and my partner were asked the usual questions. How long you staying in the USA?,Do you have a return ticket?, Have you been to the USA before? etc etc etc. and I noticed that they marked a code in our passports, This I knew meant that we was subject to more checks. They walked away and left all 400 or so of us to wait another half an hour, they then came back to me and my partner and we was pulled from the back of the queue and told to follow them to a small room. Here we were asked the usual questions over and over again. This I know to be a method of lie detection.
I know we had done nothing wrong and I know they are only doing there job but I was shaking like a leaf and thought that we was going to be striped or sent home. Again we were asked the same questions over and over again. I can see how some people lose it and end up arguing but I stayed cool and just kept answering there questions.
This went on for 25 mins or so and me and my partner were then taken to the front of the queue which still had not moved. We were finger printed and our photo was taken and we were allowed to leave. The relief felt was fantastic, we were last off the plane and first out of the airport so this made up for the ordeal that we had just been put though. I did feel for the rest of the passengers, they had been waiting for almost an hour and it was a case of no one is getting into the USA until me and my partner had been checked, every body that was on our plane gave us dirty looks as we passed them.

As a foot note I must tell you that a few days later while sight seeing round LA. Im sure I had seen one of these officers following us around universal studios all Day but I may just be paranoid.
#311293 by preiffer
07 Sep 2005, 21:46
Phil,

What airport is the overview picture of? - It's not LHR or LAX....
#311302 by mitchja
07 Sep 2005, 22:09
Good TR thanks [:)]

Make sure you complain regarding the TSA agents. I hope you got their names.

Regards
#311307 by Richard28
07 Sep 2005, 22:29
Thanks for the TR, I know your feeling, I always get paranoid about things at immigration, even though I dont even have points on my driving licence - let alone criminal activity!

Its hardly a nice welcome to a country in which you are about to give lots of $'s.

The only exception I had to this was at LAS recently, where they were welcoming, funny, and even played a joke on me [:)]
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