The boarding call was made and off we went, priority boarding was signed but it was not being adhered to and boarding was a bit of a farce, it took ages to get through with the second security screenings in place. Of course once you've done that you need to board a bus and we were waiting 5 mins or so on that before it pulled off. The plane was 'born' in August 2006, once again I didn't catch the reg or name of the plane (I'm not bothered!)
We finally made it on board and were greeted with the usual champers and other options and the IFBT came round etc.
We finally pushed back 1 hr+ late (I'd managed a little nap in this time too), they said that there was a lack of staff available to screen us quickly enough through security! I'm not so sure that was true, they only had room for a couple of screeners anyway, that's all I saw and that's all that was being operated, it could of course meant that as they were short staffed they started boarding later? Who knows, we were late anyway!
The service on this flight was excellent. Vport took a good 45 mins to be switched on though which was slightly annoying, I proceeded to watch 'Severance', it was funny in parts but mainly stupid but it passed an hour and a half. For breakfast we both went for the omlette, turkey rashers, chicken sausage option, the omlette was acceptable but the turkey rasher and chicked sausage were really quite grim and I asked for some cornflakes as I was still hungry.
Once the film had finished the wife and I went up to the bar for a few drinks, got talking to some others up there and we passed away nearly 3 hours, they ran out of champagne and heineken though - I don't think that is a good sign tbh. The wife got her in flight treatment done but I missed out. She was happy with the nail thing she had done.
After this we settled down in our seats, I tried to watch 'The Host' but couldn't get into it (English subtitles were too much for me to manage at this stage!) so switched to 'Mischief Night' which was watchable and very funny in places, reminded me of being a kid growing up in Yorkshire again. My wife had a little nap.
Soon enough it was time to eat again, we both went for the potato & leek soup, my wife had chicken and I went for the lamb & rice, we both agreed that all of it was very nice - we were stunned, the first time I can honestly say I've had nice food with VS.
Not much more to add, we touched down 90 mins late but we still had plenty of time to make our connection to LBA but on the downside we spent nearly an hour in the BMI diamond club lounge [:p] I'd forgotten how bad it was compared to the Clubhouse but then again, maybe I'm being a little unfair, there isn't much that gets even close to the clubhouse I guess?
I forgot to mention this originally - we got held for about 15 mins after the doors had opened as a girl had been taken ill on the flight (and got moved in UC [ii]) so we had to wait while medical staff came on board to check her out before they would let us off, most of the flight chose to ignore the requests to remain seated at first [V] which is bloody annoying, they can't go anywhere so standing up and tutting isn't goign to help.
All in all, despite the late flight it was a great all round experience in UC, as I posted on the outbound trip, I'm almost dreading going UC MAN-MCO in May as it just doesn't compare to the ex LHR service.
