This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
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As is usual with all my Upper Class flying I do tend to try and milk the experience for all it's worth. And why not? When you are paying with your own cash there's a frisson of delight at the haircut, the Bloody Mary made to exacting specifications, and the cream cheese and salmon bagel in the lounge. And what a new lounge it is: a cavernous room (even more cavernous when the other half reopens) with mixed seating areas and windows over the gate area. Having checked in fairly early I sauntered in around 8am and picked up a copy of the Guardian (in its new 'Berliner' format) and settled down near the 'waterfall'. Service was prompt and attentive, and in no time at all I was tucking into breakfast. Before too long it was time for my pre-booked haircut. I'm not sure that having the hairdressing salon on full view to the rest of the lounge is the best thing, but at least the windows mean there is something to look at whilst the tresses fall. Although the haircut wasn't bad, it definitely wasn't as good a cut as I've had previously. Still, it's a pleasant enough way to start the flight experience.
Unfortunately there still seem to be a few bugs in the system of the new lounge. As more and more passengers poured in, service started to become patchy, ranging a lack of paper and towels in some of the toilets through to servers messing up food orders. By 10:45 the lounge was completely full: every seat at the bar was taken so I decided to leave the hubbub for the comparative calm of the long trek to gate 36. Here the priority boarding signs were displayed prominently, ensuring that Upper Class, Premium Economy and Gold Card passengers were first into the gate area and first onto the plane. Talking of which, the looming 747 outside the window was Tinker Belle which -- good news -- meant V:Port.
I was the first J passenger to board, turning left to zone A and seat 8A. This is probably the best seat at the front if you are travelling on your own: away from the IFBT and not too near the K seats either. I didn't bother with the lottery for an in-flight treatment; in any case I would have been at the back of the queue having had a haircut already. Incidentally, I remember when two treatments were free in the lounge and you were pretty much guaranteed a massage on the plane too... or maybe it's just my rose tinted 20/20 hindsight.
I stowed my stuff, grabbed a glass of the unpleasant champagne, and then went on a search for reading matter.I don't know whether this is further evidence of cost cutting, but only a handful of magazines appeared to have been loaded, and there were few newspapers either. After being offered a Daily Mail ('no thanks, I'd rather have a newspaper') I managed to snag an Independent and strode back to my seat where I sat watching the occupants of rows 6 and 7 try and open their overhead bins (hint: there aren't any).
Push back on time, and after a short while we were handed the new(-ish) Oswald Boateng kits. These have to be the worst Upper Class kits that Virgin have ever foisted upon us. Sure, the bag is great, but let that not distract you from the absence of any moisturiser, the lack of Polos and the missing notepad. I recalled the recent days of two sorts of moisturiser, lip balm and eye gel being par for the course. Now it's just a tube of lip balm and the moisturiser in the toilet. To complete the amenities, the FSM handed out Carlos. Although he was pleasant enough, the FSM didn't stay for a chat as others have done.
As we reached cruising altitude I decided to catch up on a little work and masterfully popped up my table, dealt with the spaghetti of power cables and set to my latest corporate strategy paper with a vengeance. And then after 5 minutes the table collapsed onto my right knee with the sort of pain you might associate with being violently struck on the kneecap by 3kg of computer. After a good deal of sotto voce swearing I managed to ascertain that the mechanism was pretty much knackered. And there were no free seats, the wide open flight having been converted into a sell out as a result of VS staff travel. The table is a weak part of the UCS design, and although it's difficult to handle these kind of issues, the cabin crew weren't exactly conciliatory or apologetic. They did suggest using a pillow to prop the table up. Aha! I cried: if you hadn't off-loaded the red satin cushions I could have used one of those -- so an economy pillow was the best they could do.
This Heath Robinson arrangement did make the eating experience a novel one, and by the time I had finished my main course the unstable table looked as though it had been at the centre of an unseemly, and possibly violent, argument. The food itself was the usual ex-LHR menu: steak, chicken or vegetable lasagne. I had the steak and it was adequate: the sort of food you would have been reasonably happy with in economy. It was, however, well below the standards of food on AA, BA, NZ, QF, SQ or any other carrier I could care to mention. In fact, Virgin now has the worst business class food of any airline in my recent experience. Still, a decent enough Sauvignon Blanc enabled me to ignore this fact as our course arced towards Greenland.
A couple of films later and it was time for sandwiches and tea. I may be romanticising a bit, but I could have sworn that the salmon sandwich used to be real salmon, not the sort of salmon paste that you find in cut-price supermarkets? Another spot of TV watching, and a quick call to The Kitten to ascertain that we had, indeed, won the Ashes, and then it was time for a steak and onion sandwich (actually not bad) and some juice. Service wasn't exactly attentive, and my call button didn't work either, so I was reduced to wandering back to the galley to beg for the odd drink.
We approached LAX over downtown, turning across Santa Monica and landing a good half an hour early. As we taxied in I reminded myself that the great thing about Terminal 2 (rather than TBIT) at LAX is the relatively short line through immigration. Unfortunately the bad thing about Terminal 2 is that few of the gates can take 747s, particularly if a North West Airlines 747 is already using the Virgin assigned one. So we sat there and waited. And waited. And then waited some more. The Captain attempted to keep us informed, but when it becamce clear the North Worst were plainly telling a pack of lies the exasperation started to leak through. Eventually, and an hour after landing, the North Worst Jumbo pushed back and we took its place.
Immigration was speedy (with the obligatory Bill Gates joke, given my reasons for being in the US) and the baggage handling the usual tardy sort in the USA. Still, it wasn't too long before I was staggering through Customs to search bleary-eyed for the limo driver (Lotus Limo, recommended).
Not a bad flight, apart from the dodgy table and some iffy food. But not great either. I should have mentioned that in our eyes this is very much a make or break flight for Virgin. Given the diminution in the Upper Class product, and some rather poor flights of late, we are considering moving our travel to a more eclectic mix of airlines: NZ, BA, SQ and so on. I would say that, other than the suite and the LHR lounge, there was very little here to really make me want to fly VS over and above another carrier. Let's see what the return flight next week will bring.
Regards,
BC