V-Flyer

Hi

I am flying on VS045 and VS 010 next month in upper class, my question is the exit doors for upper at the very front of the plane or the ones that sit between upper and premium? I want to choose a sit not facing someone but also want to sit closer to the exit to get off asap.

Thanks
Kelly

Exit door at JFK will always be Door2Left. At LHR you will sometimes find that Door1Left will be opened but you can never depend on it. Various aircraft types, availability of ground staff and passenger total will all effect whether Door1Left will be opened.

OK, thank you for your reply.

If you are flying Upper, you should be left off before they allow E & PE to disembark.
Then you hit the same queues for passport control, luggage & immigration....
Your baggage *should* be the first through as well.

As above, for boarding at LHR it's just pot-luck as to the gate that HAL have allocated Virgin for the flight on the day. If they get allocated a dual jet-bridge gate, they do if possible use L1 for boarding Upper Class and L2 for everyone else. I've done the VS45 twice - once on an A346 where it was all boarding from L2 & once on a 747 where L1 was also in use for Upper Class.

Over at JFK, they generally use L2 only as there is only one dual jet-bridged gate in the wing that Virgin generally use. There is a triple jet-bridged gate, but A380's nab that most of the time for obvious reasons.

Once you're off the plane, everyone is in the same scrum for Immigration. The VS45 has quite a bad reputation for long queues here - but I have been through in under 10mins both times. In fact last time, I cleared Immigration & reclaimed my bag faster than I ended up waiting in the taxi queue to get to Downtown Manhattan.