VS027 LGW-MCO 29 APR 13 (Economy)

This is a Trip Report from the Economy cabin

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So, after what felt like an age of waiting our holiday finally arrived. Spent the night before at the Arora Garwick, in Crawley which for the night before a flight was superb and very convenient for LGW, the hotel backs onto the train station at Crawley with direct platform access.

Arrived at gatwick at about 8am having checked online the day before and bagging seq 1. Downloaded the passbook boarding card but still wanted to use the benefit of our newly acquired silver status. incidently using passbook means you can olny check in one person at a time, did the same for Mrs S and she only managed seq 22. (not that she understands the importance of seq 1 )Used the premium check in with one couple in front of us. Check in agent could have done with a personality transplant but was fairly efficient and tagged our bags as premium (not sure if that is standard practice for silver?) and put the "premium gatwick" stickers on the boarding passes. We then went through the premium security which was a breeze.

Had also booked the No1 lounge, a first for us, after the LHR clubhouse any lounge is not going to going to come close but for £20 a seat, a view of the airfield and some breakfast I thought it was great value and something I will definitely book again.

Boarding was bang on time. Beauty queen was our ride today. By the time we got to the gate boarding had already started so got on straight away. Got settled into our seats. Boarding completed fairly quickly, with all 303 passengers on board left the gate for an on time take off. Was our first time on a VS 330 and the two seats at the window were great. Gate to gate IFE was working perfectly, came on after the safety video and didn't get turned off until we got to the gate at MCO, Vera touch is superb masses of content and I found the quality of the screen very good, my only slight gripe would be the touch interface, might just be me but I found it less responsive that I would have liked, nothing that using the handset didn't fix though.

Food was excellent, I had the korma as did mrs s, even she enjoyed it and she is fussy to say the least. 2 or 3 juice runs, a skinny cow (i think) ice cream and afternoon tea all served with a smile.

Crew were very efficient, a female passenger was quite poorly during the flight, which took up 3 of the crews time, but they didn't let this affect other passengers and to be honest had I not seen them help her with oxygen I wouldn't have know, other than the ambulance waiting for the flight.

Overall another great flight from VS and just one more reason why I wouldn't choose anyone else. (The return flight backs this up further)

Thanks for TR ,just to pick your brains about the hotel we have a flight from gatwick in July and have been looking at places to stay the night before as its an early morn flight the next day,how much was it and am I right to assume the train takes you direct from Crawley to the airport ?

Hi Blacky.

Yep the train takes you directly to Gatwick and takes about 10 mins. £3.10 single. We booked a with Holiday extras and with a weeks parking at the hotel it cost £64.80 to be exact. We used a code i found on google and it was an educated guess on a 'mystery hotel'

Nice TR Nick

Good to hear the flight was to the great VS standard, and yep Ag gives you use of the Premium Economy checkin and subsequent bag tags.. I did think the premium security queue at LGW was for UC and AU only, but looks like I am wrong on that one.

Cheers for posting

P.S - top marks for SEQ 1

Thanks for the reply nick,sounds a good option

Top TR, Nick thanks for posting I agree about the No.1 lounge, no CH but a very decent place to spend a couple of hours away from the business of departures
Glad you had a great flight, yet to fly on a 330 but look forward to the opportunity

Thanks for the pair of TRs. Sounds like VS performing as they should.

JoeyC - flying PE does give you access to the premium security channel at LGW...it's been closed every time we tried to use it (perhaps they saw us coming and hid )

Blacky1 - have you looked at the Hilton? Bargains can be had and it's only a few steps from the terminal (most of those through a car park, but we'll let that pass )

Pjh
Flying easy jet to Cyprus ,is the hilton the same terminal as that flight would be ? Don't know if we are going north or south to be honest

Pjh
Flying easy jet to Cyprus ,is the hilton the same terminal as that flight would be ? Don't know if we are going north or south to be honest

The Hilton is in the south terminal. EZY fly from there, but I don't know whether the Cyrpus flight is from there...if not, there's a monorail between south and north terminals.

Hi great report, can I just ask one question, you were in economy but you mentioned the handset, I thought it was only PE that got the handset, are they in economy too?

They certainly are on the A330, not sure about the 747 as we came back in PE. They are different to the ones in PE though, as they don't have the little screen.