MrStars has travelled long haul on BA in CW before and told me he preferred VS, and also warned me I dont want hear about how much better VS is for 9 hours. I think that may have set my expectations.
We headed out to LHR via taxi and got there in good time. We were leaving from T4, which seemed much less hectic then the chaos of T1 I have experienced for short haul flights. First impressions are key, and I must say, the first impressions were not great. We entered the area for CW check-in (no one checking to see if you were actually in CW). All counters were busy but no one was ahead of us in the queue. Some woman walked by and asked if we were in CW. We said yes and she pointed generically down the desks and said go there as she walked away. All the desks were busy so we didnt know why she was telling us to go stand behind one particular busy desk so we just ignored her and continued to wait for the first available open desk.
Heres where it gets interesting. We were called forward by a young man. He took our passports and the boarding passes I had printed out during OLCI. He asked how many bags we had. One. Not one each. One. No problem. He handed me a new boarding pass. I looked at it, all looked fine. The gentleman hands MrStars his newly printed boarding pass. I glance at the seat number. Hang on. Were sitting in the same seat? Upon careful inspection we realize that this man has given my husband a boarding pass with my name and seat number on it. Check-in agent laughs and says it was because we only have one bag and good thing I looked at the boarding pass. Yeah, good thing for him that is as we wouldnt have been laughing when we tried to get through security with two of the same boarding passes. I mentally adjusted the TR dial for check-in (though I now see we dont get those dials for non-VS TRs).
There is a serious lack of signage in T4, or perhaps I should say a serious lack of signage not blocked by Christmas decorations, so we wandered around a bit before figuring out where security was located. There didnt appear to be any sort of Fastrack, but the line was not too long. MrStars beeped the machine and said I cant imagine what set it off so I told him I thought it was a random beep. We headed to the lounge at Gate 1, which I had read over on FlyerTalk, was preferable to the lounge at Gate 10. It was ok. Its no CH, but I knew that and wasnt expecting much. The food selection was slim as the hot breakfast had just ended, but the lunch was not due to start just yet. I grabbed a magazine. We werent going to be in there too long, so it didnt matter too much.
We headed to the gate, which was miles and miles away down some long corridor. It made the walk to some of the VS gates seem short. There appeared to be a sign for priority boarding, but that area was roped off, so I guess they just werent bothering with it.
We boarded and started to get settled. We were on a three-class 777. We were seated in 11E & F, so backwards facing seats in the last row of CW. I was prepared to think taking off and landing facing backwards would feel weird. It didnt. What I hadnt banked on, however, was facing the WT+ cabin during take-off and landing while the curtains are open and a panel in the middle of the divider is open. Its a bit strange staring people in the face when you are sitting in a higher class of service. People are nosy and so they gawk and you feel a bit odd. At least, I did.
The seats were the old new CW seats, if that makes sense. I think the New New Club World seats fix some of the things I am about to whinge about, but not all. First, there isnt anywhere to stash things that you dont want to leave in the overhead bin. I like to have a book, a magazine, and a lip balm with me in the seat so I dont have to keep popping up for them. There were two pockets on the side, neither of which could fit more than a tube of chapstick. No book or magazine was going to fit. The headphones were on my seat and it took me a while to figure out that those could be stashed in the pocket on the underside of the footrest. I must have look confused whilst looking for the emergency card (yes, I always read it, go look at that thread if you want to know why) b/c a kindly CC pointed out the magazine pocket, which was on the back of the seat next to me. But of course, why wouldnt it be around the corner and completely out of reach to me while seated?
In the event that you think that I am just BA bashing for the sake of it, I will now point out some of the things that I did like. The levels of recline that one can attain while in the seat position were much better than the VS UCS. In the UCS I feel like I need to convert to a bed and get an extra pillow to get the in between lying & sitting recline that I like for reading. The BA seat excelled in this area. I did not, however, find the fully flat bed to be as comfortable as the VS bed. Also, the blanket was lacking after the lovely duvets of UC.
The other area where BA excelled was in the amenity kit. The small wash bag seems like it could be useful, though much like a shoe bag, once you have a couple you probably wouldnt want/need any more. The Elemis products in the amenity kit were, in my opinion, superior to the Cowshed products given out by VS. I once tried the Cowshed lip balm and I felt like I was eating flowers for hours afterwards. The scent of the Cowshed lip balm and moisturizer were not to my liking, and way too strong. I did not have this issue with the Elemis products, and I liked that they included an eye cream.
In terms of the much talked about service aspect we had some pleasant crew members. I have experienced many pleasant crew members on VS flights, and there was nothing that any of the BS crew members said/did that made me feel like I was receiving better service than on any of my VS flights. There was one CC who was downright surly to us when we asked for a landing card for MrStars. Completely unnecessary and it just goes to show there are good and bad crew members at every airline.
Trying to remember the order of service champagne/juice/water pre-take-off. That was followed by drink service with macadamia nuts and the hot towel service. Amenity kits were handed out. Meal orders were taken/served. Near the end of the flight there was a snack service some sort of salad. Thats about it. I cant remember all of the meal choices, but they were having a turkey main in honour of Thanksgiving. MrStars had it and said it was ok. We both had the same starter buffalo mozzarella and grapefruit. It came with a green salad on the side. I had snacked in the lounge so I opted to not have a main. There were some divine Artisan du Chocolat chocolates served with the meal.
The IFE works on a system that may be similar to some of the older VS systems, but I am not sure. There were a number of movie channels. All the channels would start at the same time, and play one movie. Then, at a second, predesignated time the channels would all play a second movie. At least that is what I think happened, it was hard to tell. I thought on the older VS systems the channels run in a loop so on a 9 hour flight you could potentially watch 3 movies? I am not certain about that. In any event, the movies werent anything I wanted to see, so I did not use the IFE for anything other than looking at the map. The screens were a bit small.
The flight was uneventful, the seatbelt sign was not turned on once between take-off and landing. Oh, that reminds, me, I fly enough to know that at around 40 minutes prior to landing is a good time to use the loo, in order to avoid the rush when the announcement is made that the seatbelt signs would be going on shortly. I mentioned to MrStars that he should go put his contacts back on if he wanted to, as surely the announcement would be made soon. No announcement was made, the seatbelt sign was turned on. AFTER the seatbelt sign was on, the announcement was made that it would be turned on in 20 minutes. Huh? Someone was reading from the wrong script! About two minutes after that announcement another announcement was made that the seatbelt sign was on, please return to your seats.
Smooth landing and a decently long taxi to the gate. Once off the plane we all headed to immigration to be faced with a huge line of people who had come off flights from Mexico. The line moved decently fast, and it took us about 15 minutes to get to the front. We had an odd experience with immigration as the officer asked us Have you ever lived in the US? whilst holding our US passports in his hand. After responding Yes he stamped our customs card (but not our passports) handed them back to us and said Good luck. That is definitely one of the stranger immigration comments I have heard. Why would two Americans returning to America be wished good luck? Perhaps he knew what the baggage situation was like with BA!
I cant seem to find anything on the BA website that indicates priority baggage handling for premium passengers, so I have to guess that it does not exist. We waited about 30 minutes for our bags to come out. This was not simply down to the number of flights there, as bags were coming out, just slowly, and not ours. Remember we only had ONE bag to wait for. It was ridiculous.
Finally, our one bag came out and we were off to meet my FIL. I will sum up my overall impressions on a category by category basis between BA and VS in the return TR. (I need to give you some excuse to read it, dont I?).
