This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin
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This was a pretty big deal for us, and we loved it. Back in those days, Premium Economy was downstairs in the nose of the aircraft, and they gave us the very front seats with oodles of legroom. This, I thought, was the way we’d travel from now on. A couple of days before the end of our holiday, though, it crossed my troubled mind (as is my troubled mind’s wont) that they might not honour our Premium Economy tickets on the return flight. You know, just to show us that nobody messes with Virgin. Or something.
The Present Mrs. mdvipond told me to stop being ridiculous but - arriving late for check-in at Barbados Airport and finding ourselves at the very back of the queue for Premium Economy - even she was starting to look a little uncertain. Matters weren’t helped when the check-in agent (when we finally reached her) took our tickets, typed something into her keyboard, then frowned at her screen.
“Hmm,” she said.
Here we go, I thought. Just as I predicted: a downgrade is a-comin’ our way.
“There’s something not quite right here,” she told us.
Really? Quelle surprise, thought I.
And off she went to speak to her manager. She came back, minutes later, wearing the overly broad smile of someone who’s about to deliver particularly bad news.
“Here it comes,” I whispered to the Present Mrs. Vipond through gritted teeth. “We’ll be on the back row of Economy next to a leaking toilet. Just you wait and see.” It might be even worse than that, I thought; they might put us in the middle two seats of a middle row, sandwiched between two morbidly obese and profusely sweaty teenagers from Hull. I squared up to the chirpy check-in agent and assumed my ready-for-a-bit-of-a-barney face.
“I’m pleased to say we’ve upgraded you to Upper Class,” chirruped the agent.
“Oh. Right,” I said, wind entirely knocked from my sails. “Err. That’s lovely. Thank you.”
And, at that very moment, so began our long and enduring love affair with Virgin’s best-seats-in-the-house. From cradle seats upstairs on the 747, to the first so-called ‘flat’ seats (which, whilst technically ‘flat’, also offered the added inconvenience of being at a 30 degree angle so that you slowly slid down them overnight), to the Upper Class Suites we’re all so fond of now.
As the years went by, further upgrades just carried on coming our way. We were upgraded from Premium Economy to Upper Class - both ways - on our next flights out to New York. Once (again on a New York flight) we’d actually taken our seats in Premium when a lovely crew member - wearing Upper Class livery - explained that a family really wanted to sit together, and asked if we’d mind ‘moving downstairs’ where a glass of champagne would be awaiting us. As you can imagine, asking us twice wasn’t required. We even got similar treatment from BA, getting return upgrades from Economy to Club World when we went to Chicago.
Problem was, we now had Upper Class tastes, but Premium Economy budgets. It was dawning on me that one of these days, the Upgrade Gods were going to shift their benevolent gaze to some other fair mortals. Then what would we do? Turn right?! Well, thankfully, a handy little website came along with lots of glorious tips, hints and advice on how to make your budget go further, your frequent flyer miles be more useful and your credit card work its arse off for you. It was called V-Flyer and the rest, as they say, is history. In fact, we’re still - to this day - to take our first Economy flight with Virgin.
And so it was - after a brief and frankly disastrous flirtation with Club World to Barbados in 2013 - that we found ourselves scurrying back to the Virgin fold for this year’s jaunt. As a few of you may know, we have the good sense and fortune to live in the North of England and, as such, we prefer to fly from Manchester if we possibly can; but Barbados flights are pretty infrequent (just one a week) meaning that decently priced Upper Class seats are often as rare as Lib Dem MPs. As for reward seats - well, you’ve probably got as much of a chance of finding someone from Hull with a GCSE.
But, you see, this is where being endowed - as I am - with a healthy dose of OCD reaps real benefits. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not claiming I’m manically OCD (though it’s worth noting that I’m currently campaigning to have it renamed CDO, so that it’s in alphabetical order). It does mean, though, that I’m willing to spend inordinate amounts of time trying, and re-trying, and then trying again any set of dates, parameters, fare codes and miles deals in order to find what I’m looking for. Pretty much endlessly, if required.
Well, after only a month or so of being more-or-less permanently online, my ‘eureka’ moment occurred: Two well priced discount ‘Z’ fares (cheap, by all accounts) which would get my parents out to Barbados the week before us, and a pair of reward ‘G’s and another Z for myself, the Present Mrs. mdvipond and our nine-year-old daughter, Tizer. And - get this - they were for the Monday after Tizer broke up from school! Surely, our luck was in.
Also in tow for this trip would be a relatively new addition to our party: our 16-month-old son, Chunky Monkey. We travelled pretty extensively with his older sister from when she was even younger than him (and I think we lost count after her 50th flight), and had always been an exemplar of good behaviour, so he had quite the example to follow. Of course, no two children are quite the same, bless ‘em, and it’s safe to say that Monkey’s first year or so on the planet had shown him to be - shall we say? - slightly more ’spirited’ than his sister. Which was a slight worry.
I remember in days of yore, when we used fly business class before we were blessed with Tizer’s arrival. Nothing would send a shiver down my spine faster than the appearance of a baby at the front of the plane. Who, other than the most extreme of sado-mascochists, would bring a really small, mostly immobile, entirely incontinent person into the premium cabin of an aeroplane?!? To be fair, we only ever had one really bad experience of 'other people's children', when we found ourselves at the back of Upper Class, with Premium Economy directly behind us. In the front row of Premium there was a young couple with a baby who - from the sound of things - they were jabbing repeatedly with a rusty corkscrew. The poor little mite was beside itself. After an hour or so of its caterwauling, a crew member asked if she could do anything at all to help it get some sleep.
“No ta, love,” replied the mother, “We’ve got a long drive home after we land, and we want ‘er to sleep in the car.” Well, that’s okay then; we’ll just live with your unfortunate child screaming blue murder for the next 3,000 miles then so that you can have a nice quiet car ride!
But, like I say, we’ve usually found that people are thoughtful and responsible when travelling with their kids, as we’ve always gone out of way to be when flying with Tizer over the years. So we were (relatively) confident that we could handle anything that Chunky Monkey might through at us (both figuratively and - possibly - literally).
The day before our flight finally arrived, and at T minus 24 hours I apprehensively logged into our booking so that we could check-in online. ‘Why apprehensively?’ I hear you ask. Well, as any seasoned, 21st century traveller will tell you, for all of the benefits that technology has brought to the overall flying experience, it also presents an airline with its first chance to thoroughly cock things up for you. Time was, you’d have to wait until you got to the airport to find out that one of your party had been downgraded and the rest had been scattered to the four winds in various seats around the cabin, despite having reserved your seats together 4 months ago. But, thanks to today’s cutting edge technology, you can now discover just how badly the airline have mangled your booking from the comfort of your own home! Such wondrous times we live in...
I exaggerate, of course. That being said, I couldn’t check-in to my original seat because (we later discovered) the table was knackered, and we could only check-in Tizer and myself as the Present Mrs. Vipond - travelling with Chunky Monkey on her lap as an infant - completely threw the online system into a whirl and kept telling me that their dates of birth were incorrect. Which they weren’t. Like I say - ain’t technology grand? But with 50% of our party successfully checked-in, we considered it a ‘score draw’ and resolved to sort things at the airport.
We’ve learnt to try and make life as easy as we possibly can when flying with little people, so we’d booked ourselves a suite at the Radisson at Manchester Airport for the night before our flight. I may well love to be able to fly directly from the North to Barbados, but I’ll be buggered if I’m going to trust the M62 to behave itself on a Monday morning. And anyway, it’s always nice to start the holiday a day early.
The executive lounge at the Radisson Manchester Airport. Not too shabby
Of note, the Radisson at the airport is rather nice since its big refurbishment. It now has business class rooms and suites as well as a rather swish lounge, which we took advantage of to indulge in a few nibbles and gin and tonic or three. Chunky Monkey certainly liked it, as it gave him the ideal opportunity to introduce himself to some of his fellow guests. I have to say, I was most impressed by his ability to walk up to someone else’s table and help himself to their bowl of nuts. If I tried that, I’m pretty sure I’d be punched before too long. To his credit, he did offer the nuts to them too, albeit after he’d sucked the salt off them.
A pleasant dinner was had and, after forcing myself to sample a couple of martinis down in the bar and having a play with Tizer on the moving walkways outside the hotel (it has to be done), we retired for the night.
The next day, since our flight wasn’t until 2pm, we were able to enjoy a very leisurely breakfast in the business class lounge. The only other people in there were a group of American gents, presumably on a business trip. And, oh, they were VERY American. They all had either fervent moustaches or incredibly severe side-partings (one chap had both!). They all had very white, very straight teeth. They all wore polo shirts, slacks and those loafers that have little leather tassels on them. And they all seemed to be called either Chuck or Butch, and they were indulging in some sort of game to see who could tell the most boring story about golf. No volume control either, but that’s Americans for you. They were too much for Monkey, who gazed at them suspiciously from behind half a croissant and kept a safe distance.
Then it was another ride on the moving walkways - this time with addition of the Present Mrs. mdvipond, Monkey, six cases and Monkey’s push-chair - down to check-in at Terminal 2. It’s probably worth mentioning to those poor, aged souls who used to read my trip reports ‘back in the day’, that whilst the unruly hang-glider - also known as our Bugaboo pushchair - is still in fine fettle and occasionally transports young Monkey around the village (as it did his sister before him) we’ve finally learnt the error of our ways when travelling with the monstrosity. Comprising as it does of two separate parts and requiring anyone who wishes to collapse it to have a PhD in civil engineering, we realised (rather a little late in the day, perhaps) that it did not make an ideal travelling companion.
Chunky Monkey’s conveyance for whilst travelling abroad, therefore, is a much lighter and considerably more manageable stroller than the unruly hang-glider. But still, with this, two children, six cases and three lots of hand luggage, it was something of a relief to finally arrive at check-in to get rid of them (the cases, that is, not the children). We were greeted by a most cheery young lady who confirmed that the table in my original suite - 6A - was in fact buggered, so I was in 7A, with Tizer in 7K and the Present Mrs. mdvipond and Chunky Monkey in 6K.
Onwards to security: fast track was nice and quiet, but some of the staff were more than a little brusque. The chap manning the near end of the X-ray conveyor had about him the air of a teacher I used to have, who displayed a barely disguised dislike of all children and/or anyone who didn’t immediately understand what he was telling them (attributes which ultimately led to the teacher in question to seek a different career path).
“No! Not there! Did you hear me tell you to take your belt off yet?! No, that’s because I didn’t!! Well, if your watch is made of METAL, of course you put it through!”
I was genuinely concerned that if I offered my belongings in the wrong order, he might send me to the back of the queue.
But we were soon heading for the relative sanctuary of the Escape Lounge, which we hadn’t visited for a good five years. And you know what? It hasn’t changed a bit. Even the wilted egg sandwiches on offer looked disturbingly familiar. But there was gin and tonic and ice and lemon, so it wasn’t all bad, and surely it had to be considerably better than slobbing it with the polyester-sportswear-clad crowd who were mobbing the bar in Frankie & Benny’s downstairs.
An hour and two gin and tonics later, and it was time to board. Time was, I used to feel a little uncomfortable taking advantage of the Upper Class priority boarding lane. Strolling past the long line of Economy passengers always left me feeling a little like a member of the French aristocracy during the revolution. Looks of disgust, comments of “Who do they think they are?”, “How come they get to go on first?” and “Off with their heads!” ringing in our ears. The Rule Of Queuing runs deep in our collective psyche, and seeing someone saunter past you when you’re at the tail end of a queue of 300 people does tend to get the blood up for some people.
But, as I approach my mid-forties, I am - more and more - applying the school of thought that says, “Who gives a shit.” Quite a freeing experience, actually.
And so, on board, we turned left and found our suites waiting or us like dear old friends. After our previous experience in Club World, it was lovely to see the Upper Class suites again, as opposed to the glorified deckchairs that BA pass of as business class seating.
Yours truly to the fore, Chunky Monkey (bewildered) and the Present Mrs. Vipond beyond
A most pleasant member of crew divested me of my jacket in return for a glass of Champagne. Tizer accepted an orange juice, donned her headphones and connected herself to the inflight entertainment for the next 9 hours. Chunky Monkey and the Present Mrs. mdvipond settled themselves into their suite, the former seeming quite chilled with the experience thus far, thank god.
Oh, go on then...
I perused the offering of inflight movies, making sure those I’d been promised on Virgin’s website were actually on. And they were, which was good. You know I mentioned my OCD (CDO) earlier? Well here’s another interesting area where it comes into play: I check what movies are on via the website, then cross-reference them with the reviews from Empire, the movie magazine. In this manner, I can collate a short list of four or five films that are pretty much guaranteed not to disappoint. I’d even written them down on a little slip of paper and popped it in my wallet. I know, I’m clearly barking, but who wants to spoil an otherwise lovely flight with a shitty film? Not me, that’s for sure…
A second glass of Champagne appeared in place of my recently drained glass - which was nice - and I sipped it whilst casting an eye over the lunch menu. My parents had flown out to Barbados the week before and my father had recommended the chicken curry, which sounded fine to me. They’d loaded a child’s meal for Tizer (mushed up chicken reconstituted into some sort of dinosaur shape, I think), but she’s getting too old for that sort of thing so told me she was going to plump for the curry too. Most wise, I thought.
Plane doors were closed, seatbelt signs went on, and it seemed like we were off, which meant we were only about half full in Upper. Flight time, we were told, would be 8 and a half hours which, I reckoned, should just about be long enough for a pre-lunch drink, a nice curry, a good couple of movies, a wander around the plane and a snifter and chat at the bar. I’ve always thought it a credit to Upper Class that it’s a positive disappointment when you’re told there’s a tail-wind and your flight time has been reduced. “Aw, but I’m really enjoying this movie, and they haven’t even served afternoon tea yet!”.
We were airborne without delay, swiftly travelling up and away from Manchester (never a bad thing in my book). Then a brassy blonde member of crew was doing the rounds, taking drinks and lunch orders. When she came to me, I ordered a gin and tonic, the salmon starter, and the chicken curry please.
“Ooh, I’m sorry, someone’s just ordered the last curry,” she told me. Well, I thought, how very dare they! “But it’s your daughter who’s ordered it,” she added. “Maybe she’ll choose something else…?”
I looked toward Tizer expectantly - after all, kids love dinosaur chicken shapes, don’t they? - but she was already shaking her head in a most resolute manner. Little bugger. So, crestfallen, I ordered the steak instead.
I consoled myself with my gin and tonic, and settled to watch a movie. First on my list was ‘Big Hero 6’, the story of a boy and his large inflatable robot who, together with his nerdy friends, form a band of unlikely superheroes. Better than it sounds; sweet, touching and quite funny. This reviewer gives it: 4 stars!
During the movie, lunch appeared. The salmon starter - a ‘pillow’ of smoked salmon, according to the menu - was lovely, spoilt only by the fact that it had to share the plate with some pickled cucumber. A couple of glasses of white wine (I think it was a Chablis) made for a more than acceptable accompaniment. The steak main was also very good indeed, so much so that I barely missed the chicken curry (although that didn’t stop me from shooting daggers at Tizer across the aisle as she tucked into her Tikka Masala).
My starter (keen-eyed readers will notice I'd taken a sneaky bite prior to taking a photo)
Of note, Chunky Monkey shared his mother’s lunch (she had the same as me). With Monkey, we'd skipped the whole ‘baby food’ stage - also know as ‘slop’ - and he happily eats more or less what we do, albeit in (slightly) smaller portions. I’m proud to say, he then had the good sense to drop off for the next couple of hours, which was a weight off our minds.
Tizer, managing to tear her eyes away from the Disney Channel long enough to butter a bread roll
Lunch and movie over, I dragged a reluctant Tizer away from the Disney Channel so we could stretch our legs around the plane. Moving into the Premium Economy cabin, it seemed pretty much full and - passing through the next set of curtains - Economy was much the same. Tiger seemed to want to get our walk over and done with as quickly as possible so she could return to ‘Liv & Maddie’ or whatever trash Disney Channel was churning out, and I was reminded of how only a few years ago she used to love exploring the plane with me. Happy times. All but once, of course, when she was about four, and we walked into the Economy cabin as they were serving sandwiches, some of which were egg mayonnaise. When you pass through the ‘magic curtain’ between cabins, people can’t help but to look up to see who might be gracing them with their presence from the ‘posh’ end of the plane, so when Tizer wrinkled her nose and announced in a carrying voice:
“Eeuuw! Daddy! It SMELLS in here!” you can imagine our reception and just how quickly we were forced to retreat.
But now she made do with scurrying down one aisle, across the back, and back up the other aisle to the safety of her suite and a world of god-awful ‘tween’ programming based almost entirely in colourful, over-stylised American high schools.
Chunky Monkey - seems quite at home...
As I have two children now, it was Chunky Monkey's turn to join me on an exploration of the plane. He delighted in toddling down the aisles, trying on occasion to get onto the knee of any passenger who seemed to be watching an interesting movie, and also attempting to sample any stray crisps that had found their way onto the cabin floor. I even took him upstairs, where he charged down the aisle and was only caught just in time before he started hammering on the cockpit door. At this point, I felt it was best to return him downstairs to his waiting mother.
Tizer, over-milking how tasty her chocolate bar was for the camera
Me? Well, the trip around the plane had given me quite the thirst, so I took a seat at the bar and ordered another glass of Chablis. I was joined, presently, by a pair of very pleasant chaps who looked like male models (to be fair, next to me most people look like male models, but these guys were coiffed and polished beyond what most gents are capable of). They oozed cool. I presumed they’d be called Tyson and Sky, and that they were probably on their way to the Caribbean for a swimwear shoot. So, imagine my surprise when they told me they were called Pete and Neil, that this was their first time flying Upper Class - a special gift from one of them to the other - and they were from Newcastle and were, “Turtley knackered, ‘coz we kem doon on the Megabus this mourning, like.”
Tizer, at the bar. Again. Honestly, I don't know where she gets it from.
They proved to be really nice fellows, and rather good drinking partners, as I realised when I felt a tap on my shoulder (funny sense of humour, my plumber) and found the Present Mrs. mdvipond informing me that I’d been at the bar for nearly two hours and maybe I should give the Chablis a rest for a little while. My record of ‘losing track of time’ at the Upper Class bar is far from unblemished, so I took her advice, waved ‘bye-bye’ to my new friends, and settled back into my suite with a bottle of mineral water. And another glass of Chablis (oh come on! I was on holiday!).
I opted for the next movie on my list, ‘The Kingsman’. A cracker of a film about a British secret spy service that recruits a ’rough diamond’ into its midst. As Colin Firth’s über-posh-spy character notes: “a gentlemen is not born, a gentlemen is someone who chooses to be one.” Quite so. Loved it, this reviewer gives it: 5 stars!!
And then, as if by magic, afternoon tea arrived. A delightful array of sandwiches, dainty cakes and cream scones. Chunky Monkey - who'd fallen asleep again - woke at the smell of food and eagerly helped the Present Mrs. Vipond to put a serious dent in her cake offerings. I think Tizer enjoyed hers, though it was difficult to tell as she’d not moved away from her TV screen for the past four hours and was far from being in the mood for conversation. She tends to enter a trance-like state after a while and it can sometimes take the best religious cult de-programming experts to bring her back to her usual, ebullient self again.
Afternoon tea. With apologies for the shaky photography. I blame the Chablis.
Then, before we knew it, the usual hurly-burly of prepping the cabin for landing was about us. Was that really 8 hours? Felt a lot less. I don’t mean to sound complacent, but having seen Barbados from the air a fair few times now and - as we’re now able to carry on watching the inflight movies all the way to the gate - I wanted to make sure I caught the end of ‘The Kingsman’, so the first I knew of our arrival was the ‘bump-bump’ of plane wheels meeting runway.
Barbados airport is one of the few I know of that still doesn’t have airbridges for the 747, which means - in true vintage-travel style - one disembarks via steps down to the tarmac. Hot, sweet Caribbean air met us at the top of the steps and as Upper are allowed off the plane first, we barely faced any kind of queue once we got into the airport and up to immigration. We bagged an obliging Skycap who helped us to heft all of our cases and son-of-unruly-hang-glider from the baggage carousel.
Our taxi was waiting for us, our luggage loaded on board, bottles of mineral water gratefully received from the driver, and we were on our way to Colony Club Hotel (more of which in my return trip report).
[url=https://flic.kr/p/x73h73]
And... relax.
So, how was it being back with Virgin Atlantic? How did we feel about our return to Upper Class on a grand old 747? Well, bloody brilliant, frankly. Casual, relaxing and effortless, the flight - well - had flown by. The only cloud to blight my sunny disposition? Well, it was that damn kid in 7K who swiped my chicken tikka masala! But I’ll get her back. Just you see if I don’t. In fact, I wonder how she’ll feel about three years at Hull University…
Last edited by mdvipond on 10 Aug 2015, 18:42, edited 1 time in total.
Just like that old trusty 747, you have not disappointed in your observational sketches of your journey (I will ignore the Lib Dem comment 
) and like you I found Kingsman to be an unsung gem of a film and now I will always think of you when I see Colin firth in that role 
. Oh, another stella( r) ( no pun intended) bar experience with some lovely chaps from Mr DL land . Hope there wasn't the hangover you had with Graig a few years ago to greet you with later on.
)
. Glad you enjoyed it...
