This is a Trip Report from the Premium Economy cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
Addison Lee got me to a fairly quiet T3 in reasonable time for a Saturday morning (75 mins from Blackheath, across town). I think the new T3 drop off area is a vast improvement, and it seems that almost all the construction work has finally been completed now - there were still some hoardings around back in the summer. Actually makes T3 look more like a 21st Century airport (on the outside at least).
Check-in was a real delight. Had to wait only a matter of seconds for an agent to become free at UC check-in, and without even asking for it, offered me one of the elusive PE bulkhead seats. The agent commented 'There are still some open seats in Premium today...', i.e. not a chance in hell of an op-up, 'would you like to change your seat assignment? The bulkhead seats are open.'
Now, that's the sort of thing you expect as a Au passenger. Big thumbs up. This agent completed check-in very rapidly, and off to the security channel I went. No line, no hassle, complete doddle, bypassed shoe carnival, completed the Krapton Factor assault course through the duty free shop and departure lounge and headed for the V-Flyer's second home - the LHR Clubhouse.
The recent comments about there not always being a cloakroom attendant were confirmed - there was just a sign saying 'Please feel free to put your own stuff on the shelves'.
It was just after Noon, so I hit the Brasserie area for lunch. It was that 'lull' you get in between the morning run of US flights, so the only people there were some NRT and VS45 pax, and anyone else who turned up early, and the staff seemed to be stood around chatting. So, I found myself asking 'Er, just sit anywhere?', because I've often been herded to a specific seat in the past.
Once seated, service was good though. Shame the duck (sans-spud, of course, and a salad subbed in place) had been nuked in the microwave, turning the promise of a crispy skin into a layer of rubber.
'Iced seasonal berries with a warm white chocolate sauce' seemed to be plastic frozen fruit on the thaw.
Maybe I should have just had eggs benedict?
Of course I had to have a mojito as my cocktail of choice. Yum.
Anyway, had a nice leisurely lunch over the space of an hour, reading the paper, with no-one seeking to chase me off the table. Things were filling up around me though, so I considered it best to take one for the team and let someone else have use of the table. Boy, things really had filled up too, so I headed up to the sky lounge which wasn't blocked off for zelebs today. Thought I had better make use of it while I could!
One thing I couldn't readily find up there was power to plug the laptop in though. The wall sockets are all designated as 'lighting only' sockets, with those old-style round pins.
Service also wasn't great up there. There were three or four of us up there at one point, only once did someone come up, and when they did, they took the order from the first person to get their attention, and scurried off downstairs again.
I think that when it's at it's busiest, the cracks do start to appear in the service at the Clubhouse, but that probably really is something like only 5-10 percent of the time. That bit between about 12.30pm and 2pm seems the worst, to me anyway. Probably when food service is at it's busiest as it really is a meal time, and a busy time for flights, too.
Had to have a haircut, of course, which was done in double-quick time by a friendly kiwi bloke. Not quite like the last CH haircut, where the stylist, realising she had an easy job with my hair (i.e. there's not a lot of it) went and got me a mojito to sip whilst in the chair! The quick haircut allowed me plenty of time to get a shower, so I didn't have bits of hair clippings making me itchy during the flight.
Still didn't manage to kill enough time, as even after the shower, there was a good 60 minutes to departure time. Only one thing for it: another mojito, and a bacon roll, just to tide me over in case food onboard is bad. Shame the bacon roll wasn't great then. Nasty plastic burger bun sort of roll, felt a bit stale too.
Using the now time-honoured mojito boarding system, the first call for the flight was made about half-way through the drink. A further mojito was ordered, and part-way through that, the second boarding call was made. Final call just as I was getting down to the bottom, and it was off to Gate 3 to find G-VFIT waiting for me.
There was no line outside the gate, and I joked with the security guys, asking if I was last. They replied 'Er, one of...'. As expected, no magic beep from the boarding card reader, so no op-up, but not much of a jetway scrum either.
One issue with the bulkhead PE seats on the 346 is that the overheads directly above your seats are full of the footrests when you board, and I can't get over people who 'lay' things out in 'their overhead', like putting stuff 'flat', if you see what I mean? It's all going to slide around on takeoff anyway! Surely it's better to pack the overheads properly? Anyway, the upshot of this is that because the small overhead over the centre seats has the demo kit and other safety bits in them, the overheads above the outside bulkhead seats have all the footrests in them for the whole front row of PE. Not convinced this is the best place for them, but space is limited and you make do with what you can, I guess.
Not being a regular passenger on the Airbus (I mostly fly the SFO route which is almost always a 747), one thing I wasn't expecting was being quite so close to the galley, and I was concerned about noise from Galley FM during the flight, turned out this wasn't a problem.
Before long, the door was shut, and we were pushing back. I did notice that as soon as the 'ground staff please leave the aircraft' announcement was made, there was some sort of musical chairs going on, though I don't remember now if someone snuck up to the front of the bus.
Just as we were getting ready to push back, one of the crew looked toward me, smiled, and I smiled back. Her face then took on a 'Oh...' expression, as she realised I hadn't been offered a pre-departure drink. All credit to her, she asked if I wanted anything right then and there, but I said it was okay, and she promised to get me something as soon as the crew were released from seats and could start service.
A short delay in getting pushed back because we were right at runway rotation time - on Westerly ops, Heathrow almost always switches the arriving/departing runways over at 1500 local time, which always causes a bit of fun as the ground traffic patterns also shift at that point too, but we were soon out at 27L to take off, with the usual right turn out to take us Northward toward Scotland and Iceland. Very smooth takeoff, apart from it being a bit rattly on the roll itself, and it was noticeable how quiet and smooth the 340-600 is once in the air.
Usual welcome spiel from the FSM, followed by that damned video, so I just stuck to reading the paper for a bit, until I knew the IFE was working.
Decent selection of films on the flight, I watched films (and a bito of TV) for most of the trip, and probably only dozed during a couple of 20 minute naps. A welcome new feature is being able to do 'picture-in-picture of the movie you are watching and the skymap.
Sadly, the IFE on my seat reset itself twice, and needed manually resetting by the crew two times, during the flight. (For the techies out there, mostly the seat hardware kept segfaulting, though it also became unresponsive to the handset as well.)
To get a crew member's attention during one IFE crash (being in the window, I didn't want to disturb my dozing neighbour by getting up to find someone), I had to ring the call bell four times over about 10 minutes before someone came to do the reset, and when they came it was an SCC that I recognised from a previous flight, thought he was crap on that flight too. He didn't even apologise that I'd had to ring the call four times, he just said 'Oh, I hadn't heard it'. No excuse. There is a visual indication available in more than one place, ISTR on the Airbus, you can even see on a display which seat pressed the bell?
I can't even imagine having to ring the call bell twice on some Asian carriers, maybe even on some US ones!
However, I thought that attitude largely summed up a large proportion of the crew on that flight. I dread to think what the UC service was like on that flight.
I only really rated one of the crew members on that flight, and that was the PE crew member working our aisle. When she was around, everything was tickety boo, water, juice, ice cream, snacks, fruit, etc., all offered. While she was on break, we were just left to ourselves, no-one seemed to have been assigned by the FSM to 'cover' the PE cabin.
Only saw the FSM twice for the entire flight (once heading for the crewrest with an armfull of UC pillows, second time just before landing), recognised her from a previous flight, and therefore wasn't surprised at all that a) I hadn't seen her more during the flight, and b) she hadn't bothered to seek out the Au people on the flight to say 'Hello'.
Food onboard was okay. The main meal was actually not bad at all, some sort of Italian style chicken breast thing in a tomato sauce with pasta, decent little green salad with seeds, warm bread roll, etc.
I still think the pre-packed-ness of the Fru desserts makes them a bit naff, as is the plastic cheese.
Brandy and Baileys, and the fruit bowl were offered after the main meal, by our decent crew member.
The warm midflight snack I can only describe as a 'warm sick wrap'. It was supposed to be chicken in some sort of honey-mustard stuff, but it smelled and looked like something the cat had brought up.
Final service was the typical bland wrap or roll. Made by a company called 'impress sandwiches', I can honestly say I don't find them impressive at all! These were offered with the paper cup of coffee (and the new cups do make it look a bit more professional), and a yogurt/cereal bar thing. Also, I had asked for a coffee and a glass of water (by then having drunk my 'official' PE bottle of water, and the bottle I'd taken from the CH), but only got a coffee back. The final service was served by a different crew member, the one working PE from the opposite aisle, and one of the Y crew. It just reinforces what I thought of the crew.
We'd made good time, and we were approaching LA from the North, over Reno, having taken a route more to the North and West than is normal, and we were set up for a 45 minute early arrival on runway 24R at LAX, which also means a short taxi to Terminal 2, as both are on the North side of the LAX complex.
Had the usual situation of being towed onto the stand, which is normal for the heavies at T2, and then a short delay (I think while the route from the aircraft to the Immigration hall was being cleared and opened up for us), before, for some reason, PE were off before UC!
I was the second person into a deserted Immigration hall, as we arrived the officers were still stood in a group having a briefing, so we must have been very quick from the plane!
Seen almost straight away by a courteous, professional and efficient CPB officer (there seem to be more of these around these days), it was then a bit of a wait for bags to start being delivered, but credit to VS (well, their handlers in LAX), even these started up within about 15 minutes of the aircraft being on the blocks, and priority baggage seemed to work for me (LHR must have loaded the plane correctly), at least, and I was outside in the taxi queue by 6.45pm.
Overall verdict:
Check-in: Faultless. Great ground experience generally.
Seat: Great. I've not done a long flight in PE for a while. Didn't leave the aircraft with a square-shaped, numb bum. Seat worked properly, and seat area was clean and undamaged.
Food & Drink: Average. Reasonable main meal. All items which made up the PE service were offered, in one form or another. Those hot sick wraps really do need re-thinking though. One thing which does need to be remembered is that because only the main meal has a tray setup, crew do need to offer paper napkins with the smaller food and drink offerings, so that people have something to wipe their hands on (since it's all hand-held food) or clear up slops and spills. None of the smaller services on this flight had that.
(Contrast that to a comment from a friend who flew Air New Zealand to LAX the previous day - he said, 'I've paid for worse meals in restaurants', and thought the Air New Zealand service was amazingly good.)
Entertainment: Good choice of films and things, let down by the system being so crashy.
Cabin Crew: Below average. If I was to rate the main person who looked after our aisle, I'd say Good. Shame one or two of her shipmates let her down big style. I don't think I'm out of order in expecting not to have to ring a call bell four times, and giving someone a cup of coffee and a glass of water at the same time can't be that hard, right?
Overall: Average. Decent flight, arrived early, wasn't uncomfortable. Did what it said on the tin, but had rough edges.
Shame really, we often say that a great crew make up for a lousy airport experience. Seems the other way around on this occasion.
Mike
