VS201 HKG-LHR 4 SEP 11 (Upper Class)

[mitchja]

This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin

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Well it was finally time to leave Hong Kong and use the last of my 4 G's to get back to London.

I'd checked in online the night before, the VS201 to London departs at 23:25. I was staying at the Crowne Plaza, Causeway Bay using Priority Club points in a standard room. A Fantastic hotel, which I believe has recently been refurbished. Nice size rooms with surround sound TV system & DVD players. You even get your own personal mobile phone to use during your stay.

As most hotels kick you out at 12:00, I was weighing up my options as what to do between the hours of 12:00 and 23:25. This was made slightly easier when I enquired about a late check-out and due to my Gold Priority Club status (earned I might add and not purchased ) I was offered a 15:00 check-out and as I'd booked a hotel shuttle bus back to the airport for 15:30 so this fitted in well for me.

The bus journey to/from the airport takes about an hour so by the time I arrived at ~16:30, VS check-in was open for the VS200 to SYD. I asked about the VS201 flight and I was able to check-in for that VS Upper Check-in was once again all done very politely and professionally. I was even shown a map of the cabin and asked if my assigned seat was suitable. Having already seen the loads for this flight home; straight zeros across the board, I stuck with my 6A seat.

After chatting with one of the VS crew on a previous flight, they had mentioned that the VS201 had been chocker for several days now with it coming to the end of school holidays.

I was glad I had e-channel immigration as the normal departure immigration lines where huge. I was through security and then immigration in under 5 minutes.

Made my way the my favorite CH, where I was warmly welcomed and the agent even joked that she would wake me up if I should fall asleep before my flight. I do like the HKG CH. Nothing is ever too much trouble for the staff there and they always make you feel welcome. This also goes across the board for all the HKG VS ground staff They certainly have the Virgin flair and it's always consistent as well.

I had some dinner (Salmon followed by the cheesecake again) which was very nice. Virgin Redheads are on the menu in the CH, so it would be rude to say no

I watched the VS200 arrive from LHR around 17:15 and before long that flight was called. One of the waiters was a bit concerned I was still sat there a while after but he laughed when I told him I was on the London flight (the CH does stay open all day as Eva Air also use the CH.

From then on, there was a steady trickle of VS pax starting to arrive for the LHR flight. G-VWIN arrived from SYD around 22:00 so it was time to grab a quick shower before the transfer pax arrived.

The VS201 was called 22:55 so it was time to head down to the gate. Once again priority boarding was in place and working very well with 2 jet bridges again. I was greeted by name as I boarded by the FSM and shown to my seat. The J cabin soon filled up. The cabin crew came and offered sleep suits/drinks. Again I declined the sleep suit as I have my own shorts/t-shirt to wear when sleeping.

Before long, and a few minutes early the doors where closed. As previously mentioned, tonight's flight to London was completely full (I think that's 308 pax on an 346?) with 13 crew and 4 flight deck crew. I believe there where also a couple of staff hitching a lift in jump-seats as well.

We pushed back a few minutes early and after a short taxi we where airborne on schedule at 23:25. Tonight's flight would be 12hrs 25mins. The HKG flight is VS's longest flight (now MRU flights have stopped)

Once the seat belt sign was turned off, the cabin service commenced with the usual drinks/dinner/breakfast wake up request/duty free orders. With it been late I didn't fancy a big meal so just had the spicy pumpkin soup which was very nice

My seat was in good condition and everything was working correctly. 6A is not bad for a window view.

I'd started to watch Super 8 on V:Port before the dinner service so finished watching this before bedtime. I converted my seat to a bed, changed into my sleep gear and it was sleep time. The bed felt much more comfortable this time for some reason and it showed as 8 hours later I woke up just in time for breakfast. 8hrs sleep on a plane for me is a personal record. I cannot ever remember sleeping for that long before.

I woke up with a dry mouth so headed to the bar for some refreshment and a chocolate fix. Breakfast was soon served which was the usual choices. I was hungry so had the bacon buttie, a Danish blueberry swirl followed my the fruit & yogurt all washed down with a cup of tea.

The cabin was cleared and before long we where on final approach into LHR some 25 minutes early. With it been so early there where no merry-go-rounds and we touched down at precisely 5am and on stand a couple of minutes later. Not too long a walk to immigration where I was pleased to find IRIS still open and working (if you are not aware, IRIS is going very soon). There's now also several bio-metric gates but if like me and you don't have a biometric passport, you obvious cannot use these gates.

Bags started coming off very quickly in by 05:30 I was showering in Revivals.

After breakfast it was time to head to T5. BAA strikes again, as by this time T3 arrivals is now busy and 2 of the 4 lifts leading up to the T3 carpark/Revivals where blocked off so it was absolute chaos round the lift area.

Headed to T5 and my BA flight, where I was checked in by what can only be described as a complete jobs-worth with an attitude - way to go BA, front of house staff with an attitude really isn't the way to impress your customers. I was charged £40 for been 2Kg over-weight. She was adamant I had to pay it. Service was definitely with a smirk from BA today. Funny how my case gained at least an extra Kilogram between HKG and LHR, even though I never opened it.

The domestic flight itself was also complete chaos as clearly there was not enough storage space for all the cabin baggage.

All in all - 4 fantastic VS flights and a fantastic trip to Hong KOng and Sydney, only spoiled by a BA jobs-worth check-in agent on the domestic flight home.

VS = 1 BA = nill

Thanks for posting a great trip report. :-)

regards

Kyle

Another fantastic read, so enjoyable to hear the final installment of your famous 4G's trip!

Sounds like another great experience!

Great TR

Great report, I'm a great HKG CH fan too

James

Thanks for a great TR, I know how you feel when your connection just goes downhill after a great VS flight.

A great end to your trip James (save for the BA witch ). All my legs to SYD and back have been stellar experiences too.
I do like the fact that you can sit in semi - open air on the CH balcony at HKG and watch the frenzy of activity down below (although it can get a bit warm out there) .
DL

[buns]

James

A great result for all your VS flights to have proved to be stellar, with excellent service throughout

Needless to say, your detailed reports have kept me enthralled and allowed me to be just a tad envious, that this was all done on Reward Flights

now to start saving those pennies for your next adventure

buns

Very enjoyable TR - sounds like a one of the best routes for VS service - shame their training HQ is not there!

Mark

Sounds like the type of flight that you wish you could trap in a bottle and make every flight exactly like that one.

James

Loved the TR's, thanks. If it didn't deplete my entire points bank, I'd be looking to set up this trip.

Paul

Thank you for the great TR.

Thank you very much for the detailed TR. I read it with great interest as I will be taking the same flight in December, I hope it will be as positive a flight as yours.

Daffodil

8 hours sleep! youlucky B***** :-)

Thanks for the TR

Shame about this though ...

Headed to T5 and my BA flight, where I was checked in by what can only be described as a complete jobs-worth with an attitude - way to go BA, front of house staff with an attitude really isn't the way to impress your customers. I was charged £40 for been 2Kg over-weight. She was adamant I had to pay it. Service was definitely with a smirk from BA today. Funny how my case gained at least an extra Kilogram between HKG and LHR, even though I never opened it.

Someone on a travel programme did say that if the weight difference was marginal then it should be challenged on the basis of 'margin of error'.

I also heard of a situation where the pax demanded to see the testing log of the scales.

BBC also did an 'expose' of scales too I recall.

[mitchja]

As someone who works in an industry that relies on correctly calibrated weighing equipment both on a lab scale and industrial scale, I've already asked BA to provide me with a copy of the most recent calibration certificate and a schedule showing how often they are actually calibrated and when they where last calibrated

Great Tr thanks for writing it up.

cheers

alex

James

Many thanks for a great series of TRs and all the useful info about how to make the best of a UC Sydney trip on Virgin. I'll reread these a few times, as, like Daffodil, I'm doing exactly the same early next year.

Shame to hear the IRIS scanners are going. When I came into LHR on Sunday morning from VS46, there were about 15 people in each line for the biometric readers, massive snaking queues virtually filling the main section for the manual desks, but only 2 people ahead of me in the IRIS queue. I was through in 60 seconds flat!

I had said to my wife: "I'll go ahead and get the cases" while she had to go into the main queue. (She is not registered for IRIS).

It took her 25 minutes to get through - not a happy bunny.

Cheers

Martin

[mitchja]

Even though a couple of pax where in front of me after leaving the A/C, I was once again first to arrive at the luggage carousel all thanks to IRIS.

I think it also helps using the left hand side escalators down to the carousels once through immigration as this route is certainly much shorter than using the escalators at the other end of the immigration hall near to where the UK arrival/fast-track desks are located.