Anyway, the 5 minute drive to the Airport was great, waiting in the communial Tobagan lounge for a couple of hours until departure. Again 1st on plane for the conventional 3 class 777 flight home, stopping in Antigua to pick up the remaining pax.
Offered a refreshing glass of champagne and a paper while waiting take off is always a good thing catching up on the weeks news via the Daily Mail. Just a 1/4 full for the 1st leg of our trip and loading was non eventful. 2 well behaved children of around 3 and 6 slept for most of the journey so that added (selfishly) to my comfort.
Landed at Antigua for another hour and within 20 minutes J was full, all ar 2 seats. EC was half full while WT+ was full. Champagne was handed out to the newbies, but disappointingly not to us existing pax. Bit mean I thought, though I guess I could have asked for another glass - to be offered is even better.
Another take off, another menu, this time just one starter of goats cheese and red onion salad. Shame I didn't like goats cheese. Main was chicken in a sage and onion coating, a light gravy (jus) and potato wedges with butternut squash (quite good) or steak, potato rostis and a medley of veg (not so good). Dessert was served up with the starter (noticeably different from FIRST ad UCS where it is all served individually, which is far more convivial!) as a cold apple crumble and vanilla sauce - 5/10. Coffee and brandy (only offered one shot this time - again in F/A Class/UCS, it is poured until you say no basically - I s'pose you pays for what you get).
IFE was a bit better this time with larger screens and better movies including King, Pink Panther, Hidden/Cache (French thriller, which old cosmopolitan me watched), a funny Queen Latifah comedy and a couple of looking good films - shame only had chance to watch one in full and snippets of the others.
Shortly after food was done, duty free was brought around (just as well, since the Tobagan duty free store was not abundant with delights!). Lights went out, and apart from Raid the Larder, the IFS was done until breakkie. Not Kellogs cornflakes were served up, a bit like cardboard (being a brand snob), a smoothie and a very pleasant bacon roll with ketchup was served. Some flights you get a full English, which I missed, but the roll was a welcome filler.
The night was uneventful. How on earth, when the cabin is the temperature of the beach in Tobago, do people put jumpers and ask for extra blankets before they go to sleep? I was baking hot, could not get comfie, and had about a couple of hours snatched dozing. Bed was nticably thinner than the UCS, so look forward to the new J class being rolled out later this year (along with IFE) to see how competitive they are.
Service was OK - no names used or much chatting seen. Landing was 20 minutes ahead of schedule, gated near the immigratio which was nice. Bags were like 6th and 7th out, so within half an hour of landing, we had our bags, transported to our hotel and on the road to sunny Colchester. Very good indeed.
Great holiday, flight was fair to good, no complaints really, just the seats do need upgrading and a bit of work done on the menu (is this just the route or the night flight speaking? - don't know) - will look forward to comparing the Vancouver to LHR in August with BA (and in October doing LGW to MCO courtesy of VA in UCS for Halloween so cannot wait for that!!).
Anyway one holiday down, 8 weeks till take off again!
