VS032 UVF-LGW 22 OCT 10 (Premium Economy)

This is a Trip Report from the Premium Economy cabin

Ground Staff

Food & Drink

Entertainment

Seat

Cabin Crew

24hrs before our flight I tried OLCI. Kept getting error messages. I finally was able to get OLCI to work on the morning of our flight. Allocated seats were 32D&E and 33D,E&F again, without the option to change them

Arrived at the airport as check in opened, with the hope of being able to change seats. We asked the guy at check in but he just said, "They are your seats and cannot be changed, it's full". Not very friendly.

We had paid our hotel rep for access to the executive lounge, which was a god send. The airport is very small and the departure lounge soon filled up. The executive lounge was peaceful, relaxing & had everything we needed, namely snacks and an open bar. After about an hour my friend got called to security. She arrived back with 2 purple boarding cards, one for her & one for her dad! 2 of our party got upgraded free but that left 3 of us & her baby in PE. 2 upgrades is great but I think Virgin should think their upgrades through. The upgrades caused quite a bit of tension within our group.

Our flight was called on time and priority boarding was in place. Once on board my friend gave her upgrade to her mum because they wouldn't allow her son in UC.

I was in seat 33E, which must be a special seat as it had automatic recline. Every time I put pressure on the seat back it reclined! Luckily I had an understanding man behind me.
V-Port was working perfectly and tried watching a couple of movies.
I had the chicken meal which was nice enough, although the bacon roll before landing was bad. The bread roll was dry, like eating cardboard.

The cabin crew were flitting around, and kept busy.

We were all glad when we landed.

The flight wasn't probably as bad as I thought but when the experience starts on a down it taints the whole thing.

2 flights and 2 completely different experiences.

Vince

[buns]

Your end comment says it all - the continual problem for VS is consistency

All too often the return sector is not as good as the outbound - there are a combination of factors and one, which occurred in your instance, was starting off on the wrong foot.

To get an operational Upgrade must be seen as a bonus, once when it happened to Mrs Buns and I when we were travelling with good friends, I just left the wife of the other couple join Mrs Buns. I might not have had such a good seat, but it was the only viable option

thanks for the TR

buns

As Buns said Op Ups are a bonus and peeople give their eye teeth for them.

I know this is a hard one but if I was in the same situation I'd turn the op-up down and stayed with my friends and not even mention it.

The operational upgrade when you are in a group is never an easy thing. We have travelled as a group of 5 on three separate bookings (4 in premium and 1 in economy).....when VS was changing the config of the B747 to all upper deck Upper, two us got upgrades leaving 2 in premium and our poor friend in economy. It was made worse by the fact that one of the upgrades was called and sorted before the other one (I was the first and felt very bad initially!).

Thank you for the great TR.