This is a Trip Report from the Economy cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
I've just had such a bad experience on this flight that I was motivated to join and post on here.
First of all, this may have been a beginner's mistake, but I needed to advance purchase extra bags before I boarded. I logged in and checked in online, logged out, did something else and then logged back in to 'manage my booking' and lo - no chance to purchase extra baggage. If I'd known that it was only available up to the time when you pressed check in, would have done so, as ended up stung for £133 at the in-town check in for two small bags.
At in-town check in there was no Virgin personnel so this was executed by someone from Dragonair. There was no one on the Virgin desk at all in town at -4 hours to take off, which I'd class as prime check in time in town, allowing for MTR to airport. Waited 15 mins for Dragonair guy to come and help. He knew nothing about Virgin's new baggage policy of pay-per-bag, refused to take my HSBC Visa card as it is also a debit card (although had used it for everything in HK) and was just surly and unhelpful.
Boarding was fine, went to the back of the plane to 59A. Seat rather shabby, nasty synthetic blanket and tiny papery pillow.
However, what actually ruined the flight was the fact that the inflight entertainment system didn't work, and the horrible attitude of the CSM in dealing with it. Neither of seats A and B had V port. When I raised this with the Cabin Services Manager, she said, "Don't be stressy, we're going to be at 33,000 feet, what would you like me to do about it?" and "the box gets knocked out all the time, we can't crawl under the plane and fix it because you don't have your films". She was surly, rude, unhelpful, didn't smile and was sarcastic to me for the rest of the unending flight. The food was chicken and mash on the dinner service, measly rations of wine, then they banged up the heating and left us in the dark until breakfast.
Whilst the plane arrived in ahead of time, having sat hot, fuming, and without entertainment for 12 hours is not my idea of fun.
The plane was full, so couldn't move, and the washrooms were totally disgusting.
Breakfast was English (salami, pale white sausage, watery scrambled eggs) or cheese omelette which seemed to be left by most of the passengers around me.
I have flown many times on this route with Virgin, and with them to the US and Oz too, and this was one of the worst experiences of flying and poor service not only on Virgin but on any airline, ever.