This is a Trip Report from the Economy cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
It started great, I got to Heathrow at around 1.30pm, walked straight up to an empty UC check-in desk, was met with a smile, questioned why I had chosen such a bad seat (56H) and promptly offered a move to an exit row which was gratiously accepted.
I was through the empty security channel in a matter of seconds, bought myself lunch for the flight (a nice duck wrap, some wasabi peas, a bag of crisps and a piece of lemon cake - yummy!), grabbed a new PSP game to play on the plane and then headed straight for the club house to settle in for a couple of hours. No problems yet.
The clubhouse was a tail of two halfs. I sat down near the fireplace to start work, got my laptop out and started working away. Now I've moaned about this before, but the clubhouse was pretty empty on this occassion and nobody came over to offer a drink. There was a couple of chaps "serving" the TV and pool table area, well when I say serving I mean standing around moaning about "you'd better not let the management get one over you" and various other gripes - right in earshot. There were a few ladies standing at the end of the bar having a chinwag, not even paying attention to customers who may be in need of service. So I ended up visiting the bar myself and stood at the bar waiting for their conversation to finish before politely requesting a drink and something to eat. The first glass went down so well I was soon in need of another and again the lack of service led to another visit to the bar.
At this point I thought that maybe there was some kind of two way mirror in front of me and I could see them, but they couldn't see me, so I moved to the gallery behind the bar and suddenly the service improved no end and I was being offered timely refills for the rest of my time there.
The flight itself was uneventful, I skipped the meal of course and you should have seen the look of people's faces as I pull out my lunch whilst they peel back the foil lids to peer upon their "food". Priceless
It was at landing that everything started to go to pot. We were diverted into Newark because of high speed cross winds at JFK, we touched down at 7:20pm and we taxied to a remote stand where we were told it would be a little while before they knew if we would be disembarking or flying over to JFK. After about an hour, the Captain announced we would not be flying to JFK but due to the number of planes being diverted we had to wait for planes that arrived ahead of us to be processed first.
I'm not sure of the precise timings, but there were various announcements in the next 3 hours about customs not accepting the plane because they didn't have the right "package", then changing the steps because they were maintenance steps rather than passenger ones and then getting buses out to us.
We finally got off the plane 4hrs later and onto a bus at 11:30pm local time. Then the bus just sat on the tarmac because the driver didn't know where he was supposed to take us and we had to wait for an escort. We travelled about 200 yards and alighted into the main immigration hall.
At this point, people were just happy to be off the plane and fully anticipating being able to pick up our luggage and make their way to their destinations. Doh!
Everyone gathered around the baggage carousel with all the expectation of a young child at Christmas, there were smiles and laughter and even an orderly queue around the perimeter!
And the clock kept ticking by, people started to look around, whispers grew into conversations and the bags did not appear. Announcements kept coming over the tannoy that our bags would be here in 20 or 30 minutes - every 20 or 30 minutes.
Needless to say a few people were getting angry and taking out their frustrations on the ground staff who were trying to explain that Virgin had their own baggage handlers and that is why flights coming in after us were getting their bags and we weren't. After about an hour and a half, 3 VS staff appeared and immediately felt the wrath of the passengers, mainly because they were giving out information which was contrary to the announcements we had been hearing and as it proved, also false in its predicted timescale. I think what annoyed people most though was the lack of refreshments available, it was only in the last hour that water was available, but only if you sought it out.
At around 2am local time, they had moved the plane to a stand and started off loading the bags, the whoops and cheers from the crowd were funny to hear when the carousel started up, but they quickly changed to groans when only the crew bags came off
It was a further 10 minutes or so before the passenger bags came off and everyone was able to leave.What topped the whole day off for me was the taxi ride. I loaded my bags into the cab when the driver asked me "do you mind if I do someone else a favour and pick up more people to go to Manhattan?" I didn't mind, it saves the planet and me some cash so why not? A lovely Irish couple joined me, we asked how much the fare was and the driver said "$66" for me and "$65" for them plus tolls.
"er hang on a minute, we're going to the same place, why are you charging us twice?" He replied that we were separate fares. What a scammer! There was other choice language to use but this is a public forum. So the couple and I told him to take us back to the airport, where we all travelled together as a party of 3 for the grand total of $63 plus tolls. I got to the hotel at 5.30am local time to find out I had been put down as a no-show
but after I explained the situation they found me a room and I even got a free upgrade So it was 6.5 hours to cross the Atlantic and 10 hours to get from Newark to Manhattan
Oh, and the plane, its name was "Lady Luck"
