This is a Trip Report from the Premium Economy cabin
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After watching the weather reports on Tuesday, we decided to stay at the Sofitel on Wednesday night rather than attempt the journey to the airport on Thursday morning. I'm glad we did!
The journey to the airport is worthy of a trip report in its own right, but this isn't the place for it, suffice to say, it was slippery, slow moving, delayed, cold, drunken and down right good fun, if anything it added a day to our holiday [:D] Oh and if anyone fancies it, the Sofitel is a really nice hotel and staff were great.
We left the hotel at 7:30am and caught the 7:48(ish) Heathrow Express for the free terminal transfer from 5 to 3. After what felt like a long walk from the train, we ascended the escalators in the purple hue of terminal 3 and made our way to the UC check-in decks. Each agent was dealing with a single passenger, so the floating agent checked my Gold card and ushered us upstairs to the drive-thru check-in [y] where we were greeted by no queues and immediately checked-in. The agent offered us the seats in row 18 from our pre-booked seats in row 19 which we promptly accepted, he sorted out the bags and we made it through the security channel with no-one in front of us to hold us up [:)]
Seeing the queues in the main security channels, it made me glad to be Gold [:I]
We headed straight to the clubhouse and sat down right at the bar. Journey time from train to the bar - 12 minutes Woohoo!
The Clubhouse was pretty empty at this time so I booked a facial in the latest available slot (which was 9:45am) and returned to have some breakfast.
The only negative I can offer about the Clubhouse was it took about 3 minutes of sitting down and 30 seconds of standing at the bar before I was asked what I would like to drink, okay that's not too bad, but considering there were 3 people behind the bar and only myself and girlfriend infront of it, it is a little too long.
After getting drinks, a waitress came over and offered breakfast, I took the full breakfast and my girlfriend had the eggs benedict (and was offered two by the waitress because they are 'a little on the small side') [y]
For the following few hours, the service was fantastic with regular top-ups of champers and the facial I had was really good with a light banter throughout. I left feeling very relaxed and refreshed.
We left the Clubhouse when boarding was called and had a nice walk down to gate 32 where the priority boarding allowed us straight on board where we were greeted and offered some sparkling wine whilst we settled in.
At this point I took it upon myself to test all the seat features and I can say confidently that 18H is working as intended with no slop in the TV arm/screen or the seat itself. My girlfriend had a couple of reboots for her IFE but it worked fine in the end.
The flight itself was probably 2/3 full in economy, 1/2 full in PE and there couldn't have been more than 8 people in UC.
The service onboard was great with one particularly enthusiastic stewardess who helped out finding nice places for us to go to in Washington. There was always a smile on offer, and when we tried to order some Champagne from the inflight catalogue, only to find they had run out, she garnered us with a few glasses from up front as consolation [y]
I made the wrong choice for the food. I had the chicken, stuffing and vegetables [:$] My girlfriend had the chilli prawns with rice which was far more palatable.
All told, the flight was a great (second) start to the holiday, we got through immigration quickly and our bags were the first 2 off the baggage reclaim.
Apart from the expectedly rubbish IFE and food, I would call this a 9/10 flight.
