This is a Trip Report from the Premium Economy cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
Having arrived at Gatwick with time to spare, I wasn't that impressed with the check in. No bag drop was open. Somebody, somewhere, was however directing passengers to the bag drop line and they were just pushing in front of everybody else, the staff member running the line did sort this out, but not before more than one person got, ever so slightly, annoyed. This, and a seemingly endless amount of problems with those in front of me, meat it took almost 40 minutes to drop my bag. Rather makes a mockery of using OLCI [n]. Next time I'm going with hand luggage only!
Priority boarding was, sort of, enforced, with all the usual announcements plus one telling staff travelers that the upgrades were being processed and if they could hang back for about 25 minutes. Once on board though it seemed the crew were slightly surprised to see us! Nothing was ready no water, no menus or amenity kits (on my last flight these had all been laid out prior to boarding). Perhaps the AC had arrived late? As it wasn't very clean either.
I was asked whether I'd like to give up my nice comfy window seat for a central aisle seat downstairs. I graciously declined. Turned out it would have been so that the woman in the seat next to me could have her boyfriend sit next to her, oh well. It did explained her questions about whether I was traveling alone, and there was me getting the wrong end of the stick[:I]. Once air-born though, somebody was quickly found who was wiling to swap a downstairs seat for one upstairs.
There was nothing to really fault once we got going. Hot towels were stone cold, but handed out with such enthusiasm and everything else ran smoothly. For once the food was reasonable (Beef stew and mash which to my mind is something that lends itself to being reheated). The CC were visible throughout the flight and seemed to be kept busy by the front of the cabin...
Once on the ground the crew seemed to, again, not be quite sure of what to do. It took one of the 'traveling staff' members to call somebody from the galley under the stairs and get them to open the door after the bloke bringing the stairs had stood outside gesticulating for a number of minutes.
All in all a better experience than last November, though the difference in, for want of a better word, ability of the CC whilst the ac was air-born and whilst on the ground was puzzling.
All in all a better experience than last November, but I think some of that is down to me not having as high expectations as I did back then.
David
