This is a Trip Report from the Economy cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
I arrived at Terminal 4 to find check in for VS46 in full swing, with a 10-15min wait to check in. The woman at bag drop was nice, and my bag was weighed and tagged. She noticed my rather large camera bag and asked me to put it on the scale. Ended up weighing 19kg! She asked me to take the laptop part off and carry it on as two bags once I got to the gate otherwise "they will probably have a fit." There were porters taking all the bags from the desks to the scanners, not just the ones from UC passengers.
I was soon on my way to security and went left to avoid being irradiated by the body scanner. Security was easy and took no more than 10 minutes. I made a quick stop at duty free where I picked up a 1L bottle of Hendricks for under £20. (it's £26 at LHR duty free btw).
I watched as VS4 pushed back and then sat there....and sat there....and sat there. In fact, it was still sitting there when we began boarding at 18:50. I got on and took my seat on the upper deck
where there were no crying babies. Just a funny four or five year old kid who kept saying "Daddy, daddy, we need to get to London!" with a few people around chuckling as he kept repeating himself.The captain came on the PA and introduced him self and said it he expects pushback at 20:05 due to weather (very foggy. Worst I have ever seen at JFK actually.) and that once we push back it will be another 15-20 until we move. I thought well not too bad, typical JFK nonsense. Little did I know it would be a few HOURS until we took off... The timeline goes something like this:
20:15: we move from our stand near the gate and begin our taxi. We end up in the cargo area of the airport and stop.
Just a few minutes later the captain says he should know in 15 minutes what our taxi time is. The FSM comes on and announces they will be turning on V:PORT on the ground to keep us entertained!
Why can't they do this all the time!!??20:30: Captain comes on and says it will be about 45 minutes until we move from the cargo area so he will be shutting down the engines. By this time I've started watching The American, which was decent. It felt a little weird sitting there quietly with no engine noise, but I watched my movie and CC came around with juice and water.
A couple seated in the row in front of me had been separated and a man volunteered to move so they could sit together. After some rearranging it was sorted and he was asked if he would like a drink as a thank you. A nice gesture by the CC. I think it was all handled very well with lots of apologies and thank yous said.
21:20: Captain restarts engines and says we should be back on our way in 10 minutes time. FSM also comes on and says they will be shutting down V:PORT for take off. The original announcement asked us to just take our headphones off for takeoff, so I expected it to be on the whole time, but nope!
21:25: On the move again, finally!
21:37: Captain says he estimates 30 minutes until airborne.
21:40: Another announcement from the Captain saying the queue is moving quickly and he expects just another 10-15 minutes.
21:50: Captain says 4 aircraft ahead of use and should be about 5 more minutes.
22:00: Wheels up! Finally!!
20:20 Food is served. Choices were beef w/ couscous, chicken and mash, or veggie pasta, plus the usual drinks. I had the beef which wasn't totally to my taste but still decent. Though the amount of beef they gave you was a bit small I thought. The salad had dried cranberries, carrots, and walnuts in it and was actually fresh and quite good. There was the usual bread roll and dessert was a cinnamon cake. I had a glass of red with dinner. As much as I really wanted a G&T, I couldn't bring myself to have one with Gordon's with a bottle of Hendricks next to my feet, so red it was. There was only one round of drinks but you could have seconds if you asked.
With 1.5 hours to go breakfast was served. The choices were an apple-blueberry muffin top or a cheese danish with juice or water. I had orange juice and the muffin top.
08:48: Captain says we will be holding for about 10 minutes over Biggin Hill (BQH).
09:20: Touchdown, with gate arrival about 10 minutes later.
After the long walk to immigration, I arrived to a nearly empty hall. It took maybe 15 minutes or so to get through, and was out at 9:50.
Bags were just beginning to come out as I walked into baggage reclaim. First UC, then PE, then Economy bags. I waited and waited, and at one point the baggage conveyor stopped for 5 or 10 minutes. Not sure what the problem was but the alarm kept sounding warning it was going to restart, but it never did. Finally on the third or fourth time the alarm went off, it restarted and my bag was out 5 or 10 minutes later. Over all, 30+ minutes to get my bag from the time I got through passport control. Ground Staff would get 1 start for that if it wasn't for the porters dealing with bags at JFK.
Overall a delay of 2.5 hours on departure, and 1.5 hours upon landing, very annoying and didn't get much sleep. Spent a little while talking to a member of the CC, but didn't get a chance to ask permission to use her name, so I won't reveal it here. I did learn a lot about VS scheduling and such, was was a nice chat.
Both the CC and the captain did a very good job keeping us informed about the delays and apologised many times, but unfortunately there wasn't much they could do about the delay.
I was soon on my way to catch the tube, only to find my card kept getting declined because NatWest decided that buying a mac in the states must be possible fraud, so had to spend 10 minutes or so on the phone with them so they could reactivate my card and I could top up my oyster. Talk about adding insult to injury! Grrrr. Hopefully my flight to JFK on May 27th will be pain free...
And for the record, the staff at the gate said nothing about my very heavy carryon. (which was within size limits)
