This is a Trip Report from the Economy cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
Thursday 2nd December
Orlando International (MCO) - London Gatwick (LGW)
Departure Gate: 81
Arrival Gate: 15
Push back: 12.05am
Take off: 12.20am
Landing: 12.54pm
On Stand: 2.01pm
Duration: 7hours 51minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 747-4Q8
Registration: G-VTOP “Virginia Plain”
2nd flight on this aircraft
30th Virgin Atlantic flight
54th flight on a 747
I had not planned to post the return TR for my trip to Florida first but events in the last twenty four hours have made my mind up for me! I know my usual TRs tend to waffle a bit so please do be warned this will be a long read and I am afraid to say the juicy bits are right at the end!
Planning for my trip home was all going well until I woke up early on Wednesday morning. A flurry of emails told me that LGW was shut and things were not looking too good. I popped down to my parents local Starbucks for my morning coffee and made the most of their free wi-fi. After assessing the VS situation thanks to this site it seemed that my fear of being left stranded in Florida (hard life hey) was not going to come true. My friends and family always make fun of me for being a bit of an aviation nerd but I can tell you they were all grateful for my interest on Wednesday morning. I must say that the excellent ‘new’ website that Pete et al has developed was an excellent asset during the last 48, so good is this site that VF had more up to date information than any of the usual VS media outlets and I even took great pleasure in informing a member of the MCO ground staff about how ahead of the game VF had been.
Anyway back to the Wednesday. With a little bit of guess work Neil and I via Facebook had worked out that VS had cleverly diverted all the inbound LGW flights to LHR and as a result empty ferry flights were leaving LHR bound for LGW destinations to pick up returning passengers. So whilst outbound passengers were stranded, VS had clearly decided to plan ahead (or executed a well rehearsed contingency plan) and make getting holidaymakers and businessmen home their top priority. At this stage I was rather impressed with VS.
Late Wednesday evening I checked in online. The system worked well and I was successfully checked in. Sadly no SEQ1 this time, I managed SEQ45, so the quest continues. Being efficient I decided to print my boarding pass at home. I did check my contact details were correct, as requested by VS, and they were.
So Thursday came about. I already know that the chances of us leaving on time were about as slim as 20 odd FIFA men deciding to not take any bribes and give England the world cup. A quick look on VF told me that the 27 was expected in at 9.15pm from LHR and that the 28 (my flight) would depart at 11.15pm, so a 6 hour delay. A quick tip is that I have found the MCO to be most comprehensive also, as with VF, it had much more up to date information than the VS website. Whilst it would be a long day at least we were getting back to the UK which is a lot more than the BA passengers had!
I spent the day pottering around, getting a number of last minute American essentials that you buy on every trip (as recently discussed on this site). This flight was to be slightly different as I was flying back with my mother as she was coming back for Christmas. This adds extra stress to any journey home, despite working in the airline/travel industry for near on twenty years before I arrived in the world, she still gets rather stressed by flying and being at the airport on time.
Taking my mothers desire to be early its no surprise that at 6pm we arrived at Alamo and I deposited my car and made my way into Terminal A and the VS check in desks. Check in was a breeze (not sure if this is because we were six hours early!), I always say this but praise has to be given to the VS ground staff at MCO, they are one of the largest non UK VS stations and do an excellent job. Of course this evening was no different, there was no one at the bag drop and I was checked in by a wonderful lady. She was efficient, pleasant and to the point, just what one likes at check in (a stark contrast to the LGW experience on the outbound). My printed boarding pass was checked and the gate details were hand written onto it before I was sent on my merry way with $12 worth of food and beverage vouchers. In a change since my last flight to Florida, we no longer had to leave our bags in a TSA screening area, they were just put straight onto the belt.
So we were some five hours ahead of departure and decided to head up McCoys for a nice leisurely supper. I have worked out these Y flights, it seems much better to eat in a nice restaurant before the flight either at the airport or on the way and then just get straight on the plane, decline the food and go to sleep. McCoys was fairly busy, well as busy as I have ever seen it, I would have said an occupancy of 45%!!!! The service was excellent and the bonus being that they accepted the F&B vouchers, so my three pints of Yuengling were purchased on VS!
By 9.30pm we went for a wander around the closed shops and grabbed a coffee before heading over to Airside 4.
Being late in the evening, the TSA have had closed down one half of the security area into Airside 3/4 so they were down to three agents. I approached the agent to present my boarding pass and passport, my mother was slightly behind. She looked at our online check in boarding passes and, in that authoritarian way that only TSA staff can do, declared they were not boarding passes. I informed her that they were indeed boarding passes, which had been checked and issued by VS and pointed her eyes to the words “boarding pass” in the top right. This was the error of my ways, with that she was not having any of it. I was told in the TSA voice (slightly raised) “Sir, I will not accept that as a boarding pass, it is not a boarding pass. If I wont accept it you aint flying. Go to VS and get a proper boarding pass”. Having had a drink or two I may have told her how silly this was, which was born more out of frustration at her ridiculous officialdom than anything else. So back to the VS check in desks we went where I spoke to the girl who had checked me in and I am guessing the duty manager. He rolled his eyes, made some comment about this being the TSA graveyard shift at this time of night and her not being used to VS boarding passes.
New passes were issued and back to the TSA we went. Sods law, the line was now triple the size and had a couple of Mexican students (who were being heavily questioned) thrown in for good measure. I deliberately selected another TSA agent and passed through no problems. Interestingly I saw another couple (around 65 years old and British) in the mardy TSA agents line with online check in boarding passes. Imagine my shock as after three minutes of looking at their boarding passes she waves them through!!! It would be wrong of me to suggest that profiling happens within the TSA...
Mardy TSA agent finished with, and the body scanner avoided I made my way onto the monorail for the short whizz across to Airside 4 where Virginia Plan was sat waiting. Airside 4 was a ghost town, only Alpha Duty Free still open although this closed at 10.30pm. I decided to set up camp down in the 80 gates and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw an Open Skies 757 parked up at Gate 80 (Open Skies, is BA’s business class only airline operating from Paris to JFK and DC). Apparently (I have found this out from a.net) she flew in from Munich with 84 passengers on board for a doctors conference that is happening, this is also why LH have been sending a 744 down to MCO instead of the usual 346.
At about 11.30pm boarding was announced and as usual the huge rush of people to the front of the gate took place. I hung back and was finally called to board at 11.50pm. The jet bridge was backed all the way up into the gate area and it was clear this would be a full flight (a lot of passengers transferring from the canceled ‘16 and other carriers). Once on board the usual announcements were undertaken including a couple of special ones referencing the snow back in the UK and thanking us all of our understanding and patience. The FSM seemed a fairly chirpy lady and I saw her a couple of times during the boarding process helping passengers find overhead bins as space was rather limited to say the least.
Being late it was clear the captain and crew wanted to get on with the show and shortly before midnight we commenced our pushback and then took off into the Floridian night air at around 12.20am. The climb out from MCO always seems to be very gradual, almost like you experience on an A340, and tonight was the same. A couple of right hand turns, out over Daytona it was a straight diagonal line across the Atlantic, passing Bermuda and then making land over Cornwall.
The evening meal service was commenced which was as always combined with the bar service. I declined the meal but did go with a G+T which seem to cause the steward a lot of pain (this steward was ‘interesting’ to say the least and during the course of the flight came over as incredibly unprofessional).
I quickly got out the Bose’s and tried to settle down for some sleep. I did not manage much sleep at all and had a little play around with Odyssey. This is the third time this year I have used Odyssey and it is clearly showing signs of it age. The remote was unresponsive a lot of the time, the interface looked old and the picture quality not that good. In fact the flight was a bit of a disaster really. It was clear that the aircraft had been prepared in a rush. There was no duty free loaded, last months films still loaded, only one water and juice run was offered as the crew ran out of water (yes they didn't have enough water loaded), so dire was the situation that they even ran out of the left over cartons of water that come with the Y meal.
The flight was fairly bumpy the whole way across the pond and we did experience some very strong turbulence around three hours out of LGW. The seat belt signs pinged on for about 50 minutes and Mr Unprofessional Steward was than witnessed checking if belts were fastened using the illuminated part of his iPhone! Why he didn't have one of those small torches I do not know, lets hope it was in flight safe mode!
Around one hour twenty from London, a breakfast was served. Mr Unprofessional Steward decided to serve breakfast with his tie off (never seen this on VS) and with his shirt untucked, his tie was pinned to the pocket of his waistcoat and thus hanging down to his knee! Most odd, he looked as if he was staggering home from a night out at a wedding reception. He was also most unhelpful, he pulled the cart next to me and said “drink” which took me aback. I think what he really meant was “What would you like for breakfast sir? I have orange or apple juice”. It may not sound like much but it just created a horrid atmosphere, he was blunt and rude, clearly not interested in his job and really a bit of a let down to VS, in my opinion. There are other examples but will not go into them on here.
So with the Egg and Ham bagel or Ham and cheese sandwich (or something like that) service having been completed (I declined as it looked awful) I eagerly awaited a nice cup of tea. And I waited, and I waited. It then became clear that the crew had also run out of tea and coffee! So we had had minimal water/juice runs throughout the flight and now there were unable to offer any tea.
The Captain came on to give us the lowdown on LGW, the weather (-5!), the procedure on arrival and he also apologised for the turbulence especially for those down the back, and explained the reason for it (high tailwind and crossing the jetstream).
The FSM also came on a couple of times to keep us updated on progress into LGW and was clearly an excellent leader. She was visable throughout the flight since we were airborne, which in Y can be a rarity and I would say was one of the best I have flown with, she was constantly helping answer cabin call buttons, dealing with requests in Y etc.
At a little after 1pm we touched down into a very, very cold and snowy LGW. And this is where all the fun and games began!
We taxied onto stand but were held off for a couple of minutes as the stand had not been cleared of snow (we were apparently the first flight on stand that day). Once this had been cleared we arrived on stand. Seat belt sign was turned off and we waited. The FSM and Captain informed us a number of times that we were waiting for an airbridge operator. It quickly became clear from the Captains explanations, that Swissport had decided not to turn up to meet the flight and that he and VS Operations Department were frantically trying to get Swissport to send a ground crew to meet us! After an hour of being sat at the gate, the FSM came on to inform us that the airbridge now was moving towards the aircraft however it was covered in snow and we were to be careful on disembarking.
After an hour of being stuck on the plane there were some very grumpy, tired people not least the children (after all we had already suffered a six hour delay!). On disembarking the airbridge had been covered in VS Blankets to soak up the snow so that no one could slip or fall over. Interestingly the cleaners were all lined up on the airbridge waiting to clean the plane, so clearly one sub-contractor was aware the flight had arrived.
So then started the sprint to baggage reclaim where our bags would be waiting for us, after all we had been on the ground an hour! You can see where this is going.....on arrival at baggage reclaim (which was empty, we were the only flight in for some time) there was no reclaim for the ‘28. It was not long before 400 odd people were milling around the baggage reclaim beginning to get rather restless. An announcement was made to say that the bags were delayed due to an ‘operational error’ after thirty minutes. This was then repeated after 45 minutes. There was no sign of any VS ground staff at all (whether they be directly employed by VS or Swissport).
After an hour, I approached the lost bags guys who are subcontracted by VS. I got a bog standard ‘not my problem’ answer. I asked if anyone was around from Swissport or VS and the answer was no. Word then filtered through that the reason why we had been sat on the plane for an hour was because Swissport had minimal staff and no one had come to meet the flight. Of course this also meant that no baggage handlers were available to unload bags!
Using google on the old iPad I managed to track down the telephone number of the Swissport LGW office and gave them a call. I was then given the direct line number of the Swissport Virgin Atlantic duty manager. To my surprise she answered! I informed her I was one of about 400 passengers on the ‘28 who had been stranded in reclaim for 90 minutes with no news whatsoever, there were lots of young children who had not been offered any drinks and we did not know how long this would go on for. The response was rather shocking. I was told they had two outbound flights which took priority, all staff were working on those but due to the snow they had limited staff. I asked if they had even begun to work on our flight and was told no. I asked if she had any intention of sending a member of staff to baggage reclaim and she said no. I told her that the flight had been loaded with minimal water and asked if she could send some drinks down, she said no. She then said “if you get off the phone, I can get on with my job and get your bags back to you quicker”. She promptly hung up. The feeling of helplessness coupled with tiredness was unbelievable. By this stage most people had been up for well over thirty hours.
Around 10 minutes later two VS staffers turned up, one in a flight dispatchers uniform and the other in ground uniform. They told us that Swissport had minimal staff and as a result the flight was nowhere near being unloaded. She then answered a rather heated Q+A session. To her credit she was excellent but the situation was dire, she had no real information, VS had no duty manager on duty and it was looking as if we were lost in limbo. She admitted they had no contact with Swissport so had no way of knowing when the aircraft would be dealt with; that there was the LAS flight coming in also which could have a knock on effect; that she could not offer food or beverages due to security issues of bringing through bottled water (!); that they could not use Servisair baggage handlers (who were operating normally) because of an exclusivity contract with Swissport and so on. We did suggest VS send us our bags as they were “lost” but this apparently was not an option, I did point out that as far as I was concerned they were “lost”!. At one point it was suggested twenty passengers go down and off load the bags, which she thought was a bit tongue in cheek but so frustrated were we that it was a serious offer.
At 4.30pm, well over three hours after landing, baggage claim 6 fired into life and the bags came off in drips and drabs.
We finally made it to the car at 5.15pm and got home at 8pm. I opened up my bags to find that I had been TSA inspected and they had in their wisdom decided to repack my bag by putting a number of shirts and jumpers into the front zip pocket of my suitcase, rather than the main compartment, after ten minutes of thinking they had either stollen or forgotten to repack my bag- I found them!
Having had time to calm down I think there were a number of issues with the whole situation. Clearly VS were desperate to get passengers back to the UK (which is a good thing) but for whatever reason the flights were not loaded correctly. The owners of Gatwick were applying huge pressure to the airlines to use the airport now it was open. Sadly there was a break down in communication between VS and Swissport. How VS can operate a flight into LGW knowing that Swissport cant handle it and not put into place a contingency plan is beyond me. VS make a whole song and dance about ‘ground representatives’ being there to assist on arrival, this was a load of rubbish. There was no one of any assistance whatsoever. With The Office being just around the corner, surely some sort of planning could have gone into this. There should have been regular updates, even something along the lines of ‘we are short staffed, it will be a while’ would have been better than nothing. It really did feel like we left to ‘fend for ourselves’.
What was interesting was that of the staffers that were eventually present they were clearly of the view that the flights should have been diverted as Swissport were not ready. Its all very well having an open runway but if the staff or infrastructure is not ready for incoming flights then they should not be allowed to land. It is that simple.
Those people waiting for passengers off our flight, did speak to VS Check in staff in Zone A, who rather appallingly stated ‘they had no knowledge and couldn't comment’ or words to that effect. Upon being questioned further the response was ‘the Orlando passengers should be quiet, some people have been here two days and not three hours’ (read: stop complaining!). In my view that stance is too simplistic, those Orlando passengers had endured a lot, sure we were hugely lucky to be back in the UK but that is no excuse for awful service.
So all in all how was the experience. The Orlando Airport experience as always was first class, even with a six hour delay the staff did great. The flight was poor, the food/drink dire, the aircraft was disgustingly dirty (never look at the overflow holes in the sink!), the crew on the whole were good (especially the FSM), Mr Unprofessional aside, the flight was inadequately catered for the numbers on board. As for LGW it was a disgrace. Maybe the fault lies with Swissport, however VS has to realise that when you dress Swissport staff in your uniform, their issues become yours. A strongly worded letter is going off, I somehow think I will get a “due to exceptional weather conditons blah blah” response but I will not accept that.
I may not fly as many on here but I have undertake 95% of all my long haul flights with VS in 20 odd years. My loyalty has been unwavering, however this whole incident, the lack of communication and passing the buck has left a very sour taste. It may take a lot for me to venture back onto a VS plane.
Last edited by willd on 04 Dec 2010, 17:10, edited 1 time in total.
Getting pax home was a great plus, but not getting the support from Swissport has just put all that good work to nothing
