This is a Trip Report from the Economy cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
The beginning.
Every trip has a reason and for me this trip was a well-deserved break after a busy year at university spent writing my dissertation and various other assignments.
Having collected a fair few miles with Virgin Atlantic over the years choosing them seemed like a logical option considering the excellent miles and money fare they were offering me at the time. Along with this the flight schedule worked out well for us also, and also I would finally get the chance to ride on the somewhat elusive A340-600.
Over the recent years Virgin Atlantic has in my opinion made cuts here and there to their economy service and this flight is a chance to see if they can redeem themselves from the rather disappointingly average trip I took to SFO back in 2009 with them.
After much anticipation, planning and waiting the day finally arrived and we were up at ready at the station ready for long day ahead of us.
Eventually, after the usual hassle of suitcases, staircases and the London underground we arrived at the Heathrow Express for its fast and comfortable (if not a little overpriced) journey to Heathrow Terminal 3.
As predicted, we arrived at Heathrow in good time and walked straight to the bag drop desks where we were all able to check in our baggage and to collect the boarding pass. Having checked in online; I had already preselected row 62 in the middle, as it would allow all three of us to sit together without and additional unknown 4th passenger potentially joining us.
I was offered extra legroom seats for an extra £30, or the exit rows for an even higher amount; but I declined as whilst the extra 3 or so inches of legroom sounded tempting it would have meant we would be split around the aircraft.
Having checked in we then decided to wander over to Terminal 1 briefly as there was a Wetherspoons bar located in the landside area which offers reasonable priced breakfasts and it has become somewhat a tradition for us to go there before a flight.
After a somewhat enjoyable breakfast we decided it was time to head airside into terminal 3; which is better known as the giant sopping mall with no windows. Granted it has and still is being refurbished but when compared to the beauty of Terminal 5 at Heathrow, 3 has a long long way to go.
Security took little to no time to clear and as always we were dumped straight into the Duty Free shop, which in my personal opinion is in no way cheap.
Thankfully at this stage we had around 30 or so minutes to boarding, which was useful as Terminal 3 currently has around half of its seats missing due to them “remodelling the area”. This led to passengers crowding in what little space was left and in an already cramped feeling space; this was less than pleasant. I understand that BAA need to upgrade the terminal but I am sure they could probably replace the seats overnight if they really tried.
Still, boarding was announced and thankfully (well for me) it was a gate with a fair walk. This allowed for my only chance of the day to spot some of the various airlines, which serve Heathrow.
The Flight.
VS007
LHR-LAX
ETD / ATD: 11:30 / 12:21
ETA / ATA: 14:34 / 15:25
A340-600
G-VEIL
“Queen Of The Skies”
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G-VEIL
Boarding was fairly well organised and due to the seats we picked in the gate area, we were the first economy passengers to board and it was great to finally get the chance to board what was until the 747-800, the longest commercial passenger jet. Walking to the back, it was possible to feel the length and also to see the modern and comfortable cabin offered by Virgin Atlantic. The aircraft felt very spacious and open; and if I must say so, nicer than last years 772 – however that may relate more towards AA’s choice in 2-52 seating.
Sadly, as this was one of Virgins older A346s, the seats were the older style with arm side remotes and the large silver/plastic panels on the back of each seat. The V:Port TV screens are still even in this current era a reasonable size and make watching movies and the like a pleasure.
Legroom was average and felt less than AA last year, so taller than 5ft 8 be advised – that £30 extra might be worth paying.
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Economy Legroom
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Window Seats
Load was good but not full and lots of empty seats were around, including the row in front of us and behind us; which allowed to guilt free reclining and of course no one reclining on us as well as extra space to put our hand luggage onto. People planning to fly on a VS A436, be advised that row 61 (the on in front of us) has misaligned TVs. Now this is great if you’re in row 62 and row 61 is free, as the position of the monitors allows you to put the map on and for you to comfortably be able to see it through the seat gaps all flight. Of course if you are stuck in row 61, the positioning is going to lead to neck ache.
Departure was delayed due to ground crew needing to make further repairs to the aircraft and eventually, the aircraft pushed back; with the ever comical safety video being shown during. Take-off felt like it took forever and we glided up into the skies above Heathrow before turning to head out over the Atlantic. The Pilot advised us that today’s flight would be a reasonable 11hrs 5 minutes with some turbulence to be expected in patches.
At this stage most people in window seats closed the blinds sending the plane into darkness for almost the entirety of the 11 hour flight; which is less than pleasant and somewhat confusing to your body clock. Being in a centre seat it was therefore only possible for me to take occasional glanced from the window in the galley at the back of the aircraft.
A drinks service commenced after the handing out of the obligatory amenity kit and it took some time to reach us mainly due to our location at the back of the plane. A pack of pretzels was served with the drinks, an upgrade from my last flight where they had stopped offering anything alongside the drinks.
Still being early I passed on the free booze and opted for the dull option of a Pepsi - Perhaps I am alone here in missing the days where they served Virgin Cola?
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Drink and snacks
By this time V:Port was fully active, and luckily my system was working fully. For those of you experienced in flying VS, you will most likely be more than aware of how temperamental the system can be.
Navigating it felt slow and cumbersome at times and the map took a while to load up; however the system was fully stocked with I believe over 50 movies and however many hundreds of hours of TV shows as well as a selection of naff games and a News portal updated every 30 minutes.
My first choice was to watch one of the 6 episodes of Family Guy, which was a murder mystery one and not too bad. Wasn’t too great either – I’m beginning to feel the show may have passed its prime.
Flowing this I decided to have a quick look at the news section. Sadly V:Port didn’t like this and tripped out my system causing it to crash. Thankfully the crew were on hand to reset this and it was back working in 15 or so minutes. Luckily my iPad was more than suitable to fill the gap during the downtime.
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IFE Failure
After rebooting I chose (badly) to watch Hall Pass, as I prefer light-hearted easygoing films on long flights as my level of attention can vary. Of the however many films on offer however this movie was a terrible pick and it was in no way entertaining whatsoever and had my system crashed during the film I would not have chosen to return to it.
During the film, lunch was served. On offer today was some sort of chicken and bacon dish or a beef casserole. I opted for the beef option and it was pretty average. Along with this the meal was served with a roll (for once it wasn’t stale) a salad and a Chocolate and Banoffee GU pudding. The desert was arguably the best part, and good enough for me to eat 2 more off of my friend’s trays.
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Lunch
After the meal trays were gone and the awful movie had finished I attempted to take a short nap. This lasted around 30 minutes when I was awoken / disturbed by the turbulence.
Being awake now, I watched a few other TV choices on V:Port and some programs from my iPad. In additional I had a little wander around economy and saw quite a few more empty seats with a few people sleeping across the four in the middle of the plane. Also I noticed the water fountains VS have installed in the centre galley, making it easy if you want a quick drink and it is always possible to pop to the rear galley and grab a drink should you want something besides water. I also noticed that the toilets on this aircraft were very fancy in comparison to ones I had visited before, being fitted out with funky blue lights and lots of silver plastic and chrome like trims.
Another drinks service then followed along with an ice cream sandwich being offered. Having read reports of people not receiving this part of the service recently I was glad to see it. I jokingly said can I have a second one when he crew didn’t realise we had already been given one and he then gave me a handful; about 3 or 4 in total.
Over halfway through the flight hot snack was served with the choice of either a cheese and I believe ham pastry like think or a cheese and onion one. I picked the latter and it wasn’t too bad arguably and more than adequate.
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Following this I watched a few more items from the selection offered on V:Port (there really is a substantial amount) and played with a few of the games I have on my iPad as well as reading one of my digital magazines.
Approximately 2hrs of so from LAX we were served a third meal, consisting of the choice between Tuna Mayonnaise or Egg Mayonnaise sandwiches – Mayonnaise being something I loathe meant I passed on the sandwich offering, but I did eat the raisin chocolate cookie offered. I do feel that perhaps VS should offer an option to those who do not eat Mayonnaise – Heck I’d have even taken a banana.
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Pilot announced that we would shortly be starting our descent into LA around an hour before landing, and V:Port was subsequently turned off following resulting in a half watched Family Guy episode for me, and for my friend the last 10 minutes of his film.
As light once again began to fill the cabin it was possible to finally see the outside of the cabin and as we came close to landing the vast expanse of buildings filling out Los Angeles. For the first time on a flight in absolute years, maybe decades small packets of sweets were offered just before landing. A small but nice gesture. Touchdown was quite a bit later than planned and felt very hard, followed by a relatively short taxi to the terminal building and then a lengthy wait to get off and an even longer wait to clear immigration. Annoyingly, there were no toilets offered before immigration either so it made for a very uncomfortable wait. LAX terminal 2 has possibly the worst post-flight terminal experience I have seen so far in the USA and this was with just one international flights having arrived.
Thankfully after clearing immigration, collecting my baggage (which had been piled up by the side of the belt for some reason) we proceeded through to landside where our pre-booked chauffeur was and had been waiting for near on 2 hours.
The Holiday.
(For those of you here for the flights only, the return flight follows this section)
Being the time of day it was (or from what I learnt from the people I spoke to), we got to experience the infamous LA traffic jams.
Eventually we arrived at our hotel for the 10 days and were able to sit back and relax a little. The Los Angeles area was much bigger than anticipated and it was amazing how different one area could feel from the next. We all had a fantastic time working our way around the city visiting sights such as Little Tokyo, Santa Monica, Venice, Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the likes. This was all done more than comfortably without a car and we found that so long as we figured out what buses or metro lines would take us around the place we had no problems whatsoever; and with a TAP card costing $20 for a week of bus and rail travel it was certainly a good deal.
Here are a few photos from around the city:
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Union Station
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Tar Pits
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Only in Beverly hills?
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The iconic Hollywood sign
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Drinks with a rotating view at the Westin Bonaventure in Downtown
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Angels flight railway
Sadly, all good times have to come to an end and soon enough we were clearing out our hotel room ready for the long journey home.
Our driver picked us up about 15 or so minutes earlier than arranged with the company however this allowed for a little more time in case we met any traffic jams. Thankfully this being a Sunday there wasn’t and was at the airport around 6ish where once again we were able to check our bags in and relax. Somehow my bag was about 5 kilos or so over the limit, however I was able to move some into my friends and I was let off the rest (about 3 kilos).
Following check in, we then went to the “Encounter Restaurant” located in that odd yet iconic shaped building in the centre of LAX for a few drinks and a fairly decent view of one of the runways. The viewing deck itself had sadly closed at 5pm but luckily from the bar we were able to see some aircraft land, including a BA 747, Air France 777 and our aircraft, another VS A346.
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G-VGOA landing
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Ready for our flight home
After a few drinks we chose to clear security, which whilst it wasn’t too busy, took forever, and we were airside with about 30 or so minutes to spare. This allowed for me to pick up some very cheap Southern Comfort and to also grab a “delightful” Burger King. It filled a hole, just.
The Flight.
VS023
LAX-LHR
ETD / ATD: 21:15 / 21:30
ETA / ATA: 15:27 / 15:46
A340-600
G-VGOA
“Indian Princess”
Boarding began at 8.30pm, and doors closed just after 9.15pm. Notably, this flight appeared to be full with no spare seats visible to me. Legroom also appeared to be a little worse on this aircraft; which from my understanding is the oldest A346 in the VS fleet and one of the planes VS had placed into storage up until last year. Oddly, V:Port was active and fully functional from boarding which did allow me something to play with whilst I waited to take off.
For the first VS flight I have taken in a while, a manual safety demonstration was performed, however much of the attention was to a group of people who were attempting to fit a large hiking sized backpack under the seat in front of them. This caused a little commotion and notably one of my friends didn’t even realise a safety demonstration had been performed!
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Tighter legroom?
Eventually, we took off into the darkness and cabin crew asked all windows to be closed and that the lights would be turned off after dinner. Flight time was said to be around 10hrs 15 minutes, and then we were told that the IFE system may or may not be working at every seat as they had experienced some serious problems with it on the flight out and an engineer had been unable to resolve the problems on the ground at LAX. We were told that if our screens were working then we were some of the lucky passengers, and that if our IFE was not working then there was pretty much nothing they could do.
Thankfully my system worked, as did the ones around me – I believe it was the cabins further forward which had the issues and not the section I was in. We were also told service may be slower due to them missing a crew member on this flight – this was noticeable, especially at meal time.
I started watching the move “Morning Glory” – which admittedly was surprisingly good; when abruptly everyone’s screens went blank. The cabin crew announcing that they were now going to switch on the entertainment system; making it feel like they weren’t aware of it being fully functional. They then started it and were forced to endure for some various amount of time a bunch of videos promoting VS, and how great their IFE was - whether this was a front to cover the long loading time I’m not sure, but it did feel unnecessary. Whilst I only had to fast forward 10 minutes of my film once it was fully operational again, my friend who had been watching the last 10 minutes of his film from the outbound, had to fast forward so he could see his last 4 minutes – pretty unlucky.
A combined drink and meal service then began, with the economy options being either a beef casserole (again?) or Salmon pasta. However options were running out, and when they reached me I was also offered one of the Premium Economy meals (an option I didn’t really want to refuse). I had the choice between either some kind of chicken and potatoes dish (the crew member wasn’t too sure); or a lamb curry. I chose to have the chicken, and one of my friends had the curry. My other friend was served by the crew on the other side of the aisle and had the beef casserole as the only option – it did look quite close to the outbound dish.
My meal I believe was actually Sweet Chilli chicken (I think); and was delicious – one of the most enjoyable main courses I have had in a while. The roll accompanying the food however was very stale and felt like it was at least a week old. Dessert was some crumble / cheesecake like concoction and quite enjoyable.
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Lamb Curry
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Sweet Chilli Chicken?
After dinner, lights were switched out and after my film finished I built playlist from the music on offer and got a little sleep.
I awoke about 3 hours from landing and proceeded to watch Top Gear USA (wow, it felt obnoxious an nowhere near as good as the UK one) as well as a few episodes of The Simpsons. Breakfast (if you can call it that) was served about 2hrs before landing, and it consisted of a hot ham and cheese roll; or whilst stocks lasted a fruit salad. It was also joined with a stale piece of lemon cake. Considering this is a 10hr+ flight and on my much shorter AA flight last year I was served a fair amount more for breakfast; this meal was beyond awful and in my opinion really highlights VS’s cost cutting measurements. I had the fruit salad and it consisted of about 6 pieces of fruit and maybe 4 or so grapes but in my opinion looked better than the roll.
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Breakfast
Soon we were coming into land, and the IFE was switched off and it was possible to see outside although being in the centre seats once again my view was limited. Landing felt harder than the one from the previous flight and we seemed to hurtle down the runway for quite a long time. We then taxied to a gate where eventually we disembarked the aircraft and met the queues of LHR immigration.
The Summary.
In conclusion I didn’t expect too much of VS and came away with the feeling that whilst standards have improved the airline is a long way from being a world-class airline.
Cabin crew on the outbound were a lot friendlier than those on the return; whilst the food was adequate although severely lacking on the breakfast service. Whilst a few drink runs were made they were always within easy reach from the galley, and the toilets remained clean through the flight, which is something to be thankful for. The real gem of Virgin Atlantic to me is still their IFE system. V:Port, when working is very good with an excellent selection of programs and music – however with it crashing 4 times on the outbound (zero on the return) its reliability is questionable. Legroom in addition feels below what I have experienced on both BA and AA in the last year and even an extra inch would be greatly appreciated.
The A340-600 is a great aircraft to travel on long haul, the cabin feels wide, bright and the aircraft is very quiet on the inside during the flight.
I would recommend VS so long as the fare is cheaper than the others but would advise against paying over extra to fly with them mainly due to them just not being worth it in Economy. I am almost certain that cabin experiences in Premium Economy or Upper Class are much better. As usual these days it is a case of don’t expect much and then you wont be let down or you might even be surprised.
Los Angeles is a fantastic destination and it is more than manageable to get around without even stepping in a car – The LA metro system seems pretty reliable and buses felt regular on the major routes. We had no periods where we felt unsafe and it was no different safety wise to visiting any other major city.
I hope you have enjoyed reading my trip report, please do leave a comment; and I will be more than happy to answer any additional questions / share more detail about the trip with you all.
Kev.
