This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
When I booked my flights, I specifically choose the VS26 flight home as I wanted to try a day-light flight home for the first time.
I'd checked in online the morning before and grabbed SEQ1 + SEQ1 for both the VS26 and the VS3045
On arriving in Manhattan, I'd used the air train + subway. Being so early on a Sunday morning, I didn't fancy doing that to get back to JFK so I'd pre-booked a Carmel transfer for a 04:30am pick-up. Set my alarm for 04:00am and was checking out of the W by 04:20...which, even at that time of the morning, was taking some time, as several of the computers where down. Anyway, just I was was heading outside, my driver arrived and before long I was on my way back to JFK which didn't take long at the time of the morning and by 05:00 I was outside the VS check-in area of T4. Check-in was already open and i was quickly checked-in by a nice member of the ground team. My bag was checked through to Manchester along with my lounge passed issued for the Servisair lounge at LHR for my VLR flight and before long I was making my way to security which only took a few minutes that time of the morning. Made my way to the JFK Clubhouse. First time in this one (think this is JFK's 3rd VS Clubhouse now that I can remember or am I loosing count?)
Very nice with plenty of seats available. The Spa area is closed for the morning flight so no treatments available. Breakfast was ordered. No alcohol available at that time of the morning (not that was an issue for me). G-VGBR was already on stand (so no on-board WiFi
)The flight was called around 07:00, said my goodbyes to the Clubhouse staff, and made the short walk to the gate. This flight was also my first flight using a dream suite cabin. TBH, it's wasn't a bad as I had thought, certainly not on a day flight anyway. I do agree with other comments though about there not been enough storage space. The box under the lift-up ottoman seat is a waste of time to store anything as it's only about 5 inches deep. I just ended up putting stuff like my headphones and iPad etc behind my seat. The cabin didn't feel particularly cramped during the flight (it was also full).
I've never converted my seat into a bed so am unable to comment of that, but overall, I was actually pleasantly surprised
We pushed back on-time at 07:20. There was something like 191 pax on-board today with 13 crew and 2 flight deck crew,
Another great set of crew working in Upper today. VERA Touch is so much better than VERA on-demand. The picture quality is better and it's so much easier to use. I was talking to one of the crew at the bar about it and they said VERA Touch is also easier for them too as it very rarely crashes or suffers any issues.
Breakfast was served shortly after takeoff. I had my usual bacon roll which was good. Paid a visit or two to the bar as you do during the flight. There's a bit more space round the A330 bar area to socialise compared to other A/C.
The on-board AeroMobile now works with EE mobile phone accounts, as it didn't earlier in the year (I presume T-Mobile and Orange works as well as I have a 4GEE account now). Oddly when buying some roaming data from EE to use via AeroMobile, they thought I was in Norway even though I was crossing the Atlantic Ocean so where only charging me at EU roaming rates
You only get Edge data speeds on-board but that's enough for a bit of FaceBooking etc.Roll on on-board WiFi please VS
During the flight I also watched a couple of films. VERA Touch also stays paused when you pause a film unlike VERA on depend which starts creeping forward after a few minutes of being left on pause.
Dinner was served later in the flight. I had the asparagus soup for a starter, followed by the salmon with the cheesecake for desert which was excellent, although the soup wasn't particularly hot.
Those dream suite tables do look to have been severely over-engineered and seem to have a very complicated latch and slide mechanism but who are we to argue!!
It was a reasonably quick flight being just over 6 hours today with no stacking coming into LHR. We landed just after 19:00 and where soon on stand.
Even though I has checked through to MAN, I'd already made the decision to land myself at LHR and then connect landslide as a) I needed some nicotine and b) LHR FCC is usually a nightmare anyway. No idea if you are really supposed to do this when having checked-through bags to another UK airport, but I had no issues during the land-side transfer.
To my complete surprise IRIS is still there and still working in immigration. The e-gate lines where once again longer than the manual lines with the IRIS line completely deserted
The top screen didn't seem to be working properly in the IRIS booth and so I had to squat down and use the middle one but other than that I was through immigration in under a minute No bags to collect so straight outside
walked to T1 using the underground walkways which takes about 15 minutes. Straight up to T1 security (via another small detour outside again) and straight through as I already had my VS3045 boarding card.All in all another great VS flight
Logged into my VS FC account this morning to be greeted with this message 'Congratulations! You have reached Flying Club Gold status!' - which is actually mostly thanks to the VS bonus TP promo VS where running at the end of last year
I would definitely do a day-light flight back to the UK again as with the VLR connection to MAN meant I was home by 23:00 so went straight to bed after a shower. Later in the day, whilst I was feeling a little tired, I certainly felt a lot better and didn't have that groggy jet-lag tiredness feeling you get with over-night flights.
Regards
James Mitchell
James Mitchell
