V-Flyer

The return leg of my holiday trip... boo hoo...

I had originally been allocated some seats in a row in the high 50s, so not ideal, but wanted a 'middle 4' for the family, so the girls had room to spread out and sleep. on a couple of previous occasions I'd speculatively done 2x2 B&C seats behind one another, but always ended up with people in the A seats, so decided against trying that this time.

Even so, I figured that on the inbound leg, there might not be such a scrum for the additional seats that opened up at OLCI, so imagine my surprise when there was no option to change seats even though I was bang on 24 hours before take off. Darn.

So anyway, we got to the airport in plenty of time, thanks to a suicidally fast transfer driver (and anyone that knows St Lucia will appreciate the current state of the roads after last year's weather). Y check in was mobbed but no queue at UC so got through that easily enough. They actually laughed when I asked if there were any upgrade opportunities, but after my experiences with the outbound flight, my expectations had already been well and truly managed.

My wife however had noticed something, namely the absence of a virgin plane - and there are limited options for playing hide and seek with a jumbo at UVF! It appeared that the check in staff knew there was going to be a delay but were not bothering to tell anyone (although I did hear afterwards that it had been mentioned to UC pax...). Never did find out why the inbound flight was delayed but eventually we discovered that we would be leaving about an hour late, so not the end of the world.

Interesting side note that almost all the check in staff were dressed in AA uniform, so presumably there's some subcontracting arrangement going on there.

UVF isn't a huge airport and the departures lounge was already pretty full, so I decided to chance my arm with the family in the shared 'Iyanola Executive lounge' on my AU card. To my utter amazement, the lady at reception had a print out of all eligible VS pax, and I was on it - and they were happy for all of us to go in free. Big plus for organisation and service there I think.

The lounge itself was small, very basic and fairly busy, but still a relative oasis of calm and comfort. A few rather unappetizing nibbles but most importantly plenty of cold beer.
Apparently you could buy your way in for $50 each (US not EC dollars!), which would have been a stretch to justify. There seemed to be only one person looking after the entire place, and he did a good job running around serving drinks and rearranging furniture to accommodate people.

Eventually the flight was called - again got the benefit of priority boarding, although that was marginalised a bit by ground staff deciding that a baby stroller from a UC pax in front needed to go into a sealed plastic sack. That's a new one to me - some new security measure perhaps. Anyway, rather comical to watch...

Once on board, it was clear there were going to be quite a few spare seats at the back - there was a whole row of 3 next to where I was sitting that I made a move on as soon as the seatbelt signs were off. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep, but at least it made things a bit more comfortable while I struggled to find something to watch on Nova (it really is shameful Virgin, seriously!!)

I had a halfway decent dinner which was some sort of chicken risotto/paella - little bit greasy, but flavour was ok and one of the better Y meals I've had for a while. I had to smile at the breakfast, which was a hot bacon/cheese or egg/cheese roll. I went for the bacon and would swear that it's identical to the bacon that they use in UC (although the roll itself wasn't, and heaven knows why cheese was considered a good partner...). Pretty palatable stuff overall, and helped compensate for a total lack of sleep.

Not too bad a flight overall, I can't really comment much on the CC as I was at least trying to doze for the majority of the time on board. It was a bit bumpy though and credit to the pilot to not having an itchy 'seatbelt finger'. Also, pedant of the year award to the CC that insisted that one of the window blinds was about a centimetre from being fully opened (as required) when morning came. And yes, I'm sure there are various rules and regs around this practise, but all I can say is that on the other side of the plane, there were plenty that were left barely more than half up.

Finally just to note that, as with the outbound flight, the UC luggage tags worked their magic and we got out of baggage reclaim quickly - despite the presence of the many customs heavies that always put in an appearance at flights from the caribbean. Looking at the people being stopped, there was clearly a certain, erm, 'profile' of pax being targeted there as well.

So... onwards to Dubai in May. And probably another futile quest for PE upgrades...

RC

Thank you for the great return TR.

Thanks for the TR - Glad you managed the lounge access!!

Lucky you got the 3 seats to yourself, bonus