This is a Trip Report from the Premium Economy cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
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Cabin Crew
Aircraft Reg: G-VFAR (A340-300)
Given that this was a night flight with not much incident, I'm not going to do one of my more creative style TRs. I've got a flight back to SFO at the start of January, so I'll start having a think about a style for that one ;-)
I wasn't in the best of states for what was going to be my second red-eye in 24 hours, having flown in from SFO the night before, starting to feel myself nodding off in the car to JFK. I arrived at the airport at around 4.30pm for a 6.10 departure, but had to hit the ticket desk first as I had a change fee to pay. I've never understood why, if you make a change to a return flight from the US, the Virgin US telephone customer service people can take your card details but not actually process the payment. This also meant I couldn't use online check-in.
I've marked down the check-in experience to reflect the service at the ticket desk, even though check-in itself was a dream, and this seems a bit unfair, but seriously; when I got to the ticket desk both agents were dealing with people, one with a couple who seemed to be having a hard time getting their agent to understand what seemed like an extremely simple request, and the other with a uniformed Virgin crew member issuing a number of tickets. Given that I don't understand why my payment couldn't have just been processed days earlier when I'd changed the booking, I wasn't in a good mood about having to be there in the first place, but the lack of energy or enthusiasm displayed by the ticket desk staff was unbelievable. When the one who eventually dealt with me was *finally* done with the crew member she looked at me in what I assumed was an invitation to come forward, then without saying a word to me got up and wandered off for three or four minutes! It was a few minutes to five when I finally went over to check-in where I was greeted warmly and dealt with efficiently.
My intention was to try and sleep as much of the flight as possible, so I'd really wanted to make sure I had time to get something to eat in the Clubhouse, so I nipped round there after dropping my bag with security and settled in. Rather than wait for a waiter to spot me and take an order (I've had a lot of very inattentive service in the JFK CH) I flagged one down in passing and ordered a glass of wine and the Chicken Tikka, which came fairly promptly.
Boarding was called at just after 5.30, though I left it for the second call, and security was the usual JFK scrum, but I got to the gate pretty quickly and went straight on board, where I was one of the last people into the (full) PE cabin. This was my first trip on a 300, so I was interested to compare. I think if I was in the rear of the UC cabin I'd feel a little bit in the laps of the front row of PE, given the lack of a real divide.
Anyway, water, amenity kits and menus were on the seats, and the crew were already doing the rounds with pre-take off drinks. I settled in and was dozing from shortly after the on-time pushback, so I'm not sure exactly how long we taxied, but given the time that I woke up and we were in the air it can't have been as long as some JFK evenings I've known.
Having had that snooze, of course I was then wide awake for the rest of the flight.
Pre-dinner drinks orders were taken and served from the galley, rather than the trolley, and shortly after dinner was served, which I passed on. Brandy and Baileys made an appearance and so did the fruit bowl.
I wasn't really in the mood for anything on the IFE (Odyssey), so I read a book and watched a few episodes of Love Soup on the Touch. The crew were very much in evidence throughout the flight, and were friendly and efficient. The one exception to this was that I'd clearly missed the Duty Free coming up my side of the cabin, so when I wandered down to the rear galley to ask if I could get something I was given a real raised-eyes look, and made to feel like I was causing a terrible amount of trouble, even though they were *just* getting back from the round.
At one point the man sitting next to me got up to go to the bathroom and knocked my (still partly full) brandy glass off the side table and into my seat, but the lights were dimmed by that point so I didn't realise what had happened until I sat back down and felt the glass crunch under me. Fortunately I emerged with an unlacerated (though slightly wet) rear, and I had to get a crew member to help clear up the glass as I couldn't see it all. She was very concerned and helpful, and when my neighbour came back, wondering what on earth had happened, he was very apologetic.
I didn't bother with breakfast (that's what Revivals is for). We landed at 6am (for a 6.20 schedule) and were on stand by 6.10.
Straight through IRIS and did my usual trick of going down the stairs to the baggage hall at the furthest end from the belt in use, but the bags were off promptly and mine was the sixth on the belt, so I made it to Revivals in record time. Showered, breakfasted and out for a cab to the office by 7am.
In-flight, the PE service was great, but the crew lost marks for the duty free incident, and the ticket desk staff at JFK really soured the experience at the airport.
