VS045 LHR-JFK 9 JAN 13 (Upper Class)

This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin

Ground Staff

Food & Drink

Entertainment

Seat

Cabin Crew

This Trip was booked back in August as a pleasure trip to the Big Apple, I booked an upgradeable L Class economy fare and used 40K Miles to upgrade to Upper Class, In All it cost About £760 and my miles which I thought was pretty reasonable, I was assisted with making the booking by a particularly helpful and efficient agent on the flying club line, I Know many will say the agent was "just doing their Job" But its nice to have an agent who knew what he was talking about and was very personable also.

Anyway onto the day of Travel, I'd booked to use the drive through check in and we arrived at 10:30 am, greeted pleasantly bags taken from car, boarding passes issued and we were off and through security in no time, We headed straight to the clubhouse where we had to wait a few minutes as the only dragon on duty was trying to repel a feisty young man who appeared to be trying to gain access without having any entitlement!

Thankfully the dragon ushered him to one side after a minute or 2 so that she could process us, We were welcomed and asked if we were aware of the layout which we were, so we were left to our own devices, First point of call was the Spa to book a Massage, Both myself and my other half were successful on this front.

We had an hour to kill prior to the massages so decided to have a late breakfast, bacon and sausage roll for me with I'm ashamed to say Champagne!!

Breakfast was nice and once we had finished we moved to some more comfortable chairs near the bar, where i had a few more glasses of Champers and my other half had a redhead or 2!!



Before long it was time for the massage which was very nice, at the end of my paid massage I was offered my free treatment so i tagged the facial onto the end all very pleasant!!

I'm a great fan of the clubhouse burger's and being that it was now late enough in the day for them to be served i went back to the restaurant to enjoy a burger,



The flight was called whilst i was finishing the burger which left me just enough time for a refreshing Peroni before heading down to the gate where we were greeted by Tinkerbelle, Priority Boarding/entrance to gate was in place though the PE and UC line was far busier than the Economy line, It took a couple of minutes to gain access to the gate but once we were through we were allowed straight onboard.

Greeted at the door and shown to our seats 14 a&k, Some of you may have read my previous little whinge about being inexplicably removed from 12 a&k in the week prior to the flight, the 2 people in 12 a&k didnt know each other and one was actually moved as she felt she was too close to the other person!! So I still have no idea why we were bumped from those seats but never mind row 14 was nearly as good!


You can see the lady who wished to be moved from 12 K on the left!



I had only just settled into my seat when Champagne was offered and accepted, shortly afterwards the FSM introduced herself and greeted me by name which was nice and is no small feat when you have a surname like mine!! and besides I'm only a Silver flying club member, champagne refills were offered which was nice.

We Pushed back on time but had quite a wait for take off behind a number of other aircraft, i took a photo whilst waiting.



We departed on 27R and had a fairly bumpy initial climb out of LHR but it soon smoothed out and drink and dinner orders were taken we were looked after by Jennifer (Permission Sought) and she displayed a professional but down to earth and fun personality that I really think sets VS apart from other carriers in premium cabins.



After my excesses in the Clubhouse I declined the starters and moved straight to the main course which was Roast Breast of Chicken and very nice it was too!! Skipped dessert and moved to cheese and biscuits, then i settled down to watch the IFE I choose "The Dictator" which i thought was pretty funny in places ( My other half later told me that i had been sniggering like a child whilst watching )

After the dictator I Converted the seat to bed mode and laid down to start watching "Ted"



I fully expected that i would fall asleep and was not disappointed!! I was woken as i had requested for afternoon tea, I wasn't very hungry but had a scone and cup of coffee to wake me up bit.

Once the afternoon tea service had been cleared away, Jennifer came and sat down and had a chat with us ( she had previously asked about our trip and found out we would be going on a cruise that she had been on several times before) and gave us lots of useful bits of info about what we could expect, which was nice and again I think this is something that sets VS crew apart from other carriers!!

By now we were starting our descent into JFK and the seatbelt signs were illuminated, descent and landing were smooth and simple and after a 5 minute taxi we were on stand, PE and Econ were held whilst UC disembarked and we were on our way to immigration!! Now i had been dreading immigration after reading horror stories about 2 hr plus waits, But we arrived into a pretty quiet hall and were through in about 20 minutes (We did arrive 30 minutes or so early which may have helped?), Bags were waiting for collection the other side, so it was time to ring Dial 7 who met us at the pickup area within 5 minutes, A smooth and mostly traffic free ride to manhattan and our hotel the Westin Times Square ( highly reccomended) and we were checked in and in the room by 5-30PM

All in a great flight with a great crew, we arrived early and were lucky with immigration so could not have asked for a smoother trip.

What a great experience, thanks for the TR

Thank you for the great TR and pics.

Really enjoyed your TR . Loved the photos ! Thank you.
Hope you have a good flight back.

Thank you for posting your TR. An enjoyable read and great pictures.

Thanks for whetting my appetite for our soon come trip to NYC. I'm envious of your being on a 747 though...all I could get with miles is a 330 service.

Thanks for posting a great TR. I'm on the 45 in just over 10 weeks time, so good to see your experience was a good one :-)

Great TR ,always like them more when photos are included,still got to get round to doing my latest TR .
Quick question if I may.
Am I understanding you correctly that you booked the flight through the flying club? To be honest all the different fare codes and ways of doing things to get the best result baffles me but it seems like yours was fairly straight forward as I'm looking to do similar to you in the next month or two.
Blacky

Yes I booked it all through the flying club over the phone , before I rang them I checked online what the lowest upgradeable fare was going to cost ( at the time an L Fare was the cheapest that could be upgraded with miles now an M fare can be ) then I checked that reward seats in upper were available by doing a dummy booking on a straight reward flight.

Once I had that information I rang the flying club telling them which flights I wanted and they held the reward seat for me while they were booking the economy fare then upgraded the flight to the upper reward seat they had held using my miles!! It was a surprisingly simple process!

Trev

Great TR Trev - shame about 12A&12K but it looks like you still had a fab time!

Result on the immigration lines.

Thanks for the info trev
It seems like it should be fairly simple touch wood.
Will let you know the outcome
Blacky

Thanks for the TR, sounds like a good flight.
£760 is a great price for an L/G to New York -- well done!