VS29 today

Looks like G-VMNK is having a few problems today. Departed a couple of hours late for BGI and is currently circling off Brighton after turning round over the Celtic Sea.

She’s been airborne for over three hours now and looks to be dumping fuel at present.

I flew back on MNK from BGI on Tuesday night. Anyone noticed the lighting onboard flickers VERY badly when descending? Crew had to switch off the lights it was that bad.

I was on todays VS29 and we were late leaving along with loads of other flights due to baggage belt issues, all the bags were getting stacked up in the terminal and had to be taken down in cages. Due to the amount of bags they couldn't get them down and sorted and then on to the flights in time, so that was an hour delay.

As for the technical return, I guess we were a hundred miles or so off the coast just about to start our Atlantic crossing when we did a gentle 180 turn and it was then I realised things weren't right. The flight map had never shown the correct times, altitudes etc since departure. I don't know if this was related to the discrepancy the crew were seeing, but apparently they had been trying to rectify the problem for awhile before we turned back. The crew informed us that we couldn't complete the Atlantic crossing due to a degredation in the aircrafts navigational capabilities.

We flew a couple of long loops over the Plymouth area with the speedbrakes out all the time to create drag to increase the fuel flow (the Virgin A330-200's don't have fuel dumping), we were approximately 7 tonnes over the maximum landing weight.

After that we descended and headed to Brighton where we went into a hold at 8,000' with the landing gear down for almost an hour before returning to Gatwick.

Kudos to Virgin Staff both on the flight and on the ground, loads of information and plenty of people to meet us at Gatwick upon our arrival. Everyone has been rebooked on tomorrows VS1029 (couldn't get another aircraft for us today due to repatriation flights and another aircraft going Tech).

All pasengers who couldn't get home easily were provided with hotel accommodation, I'm currently writing this from the Sandman hotel, where we were given meal vouchers, taxi's were sorted and I forgot I was also given a £10 refreshment voucher, but never got round to using.

Tomorrow we do it all again, so Gatwick Clubhouse here we come.

Thankfully I managed to get my hotel sorted out in Barbados so they don't give away the room due to a no show, quite an adventurous reward flight just for a few days away in Barbados.

PS. Don't get on a flight with me this is the 4th return I have experienced over the years, according to the really nice cabin crew when I told them they reckon I'm a jinx, one of them said this was only the 2nd one they had had in 20 years as crew.

Thanks for the account AlphaEcho - what a pity.

Hopefully today will go more smoothly for you all. Safety comes first, so the pilots made the right call.

Thanks for the detailed update AE, it sounds like things were handled pretty well by VS. I hope another few hours in the Clubhouse are bearable this morning!

I saw that G-VWIN was operating a repatriation flight from Holguin, Cuba last night but made a stop at BGI even though the VS30 was cancelled. I think this stop must have been unrelated to this and was possibly a fuel stop.

Fingers crossed for you today, safe flight,

Matt