This is a Trip Report from the Economy cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
2 adults travelling with a 6 year old, 4 year old and 13 week old baby.We arrived at the car hire return at MCO and learning from my outbound trip quickly waved at a man with a trolley, gave him $10 and asked him to take all my stuff to the Virgin check in desk, money well spent. We found a laydown area and quickly bubble-wrapped the baby seat and pram chassis, check-in was quiet so we were called over to a PE desk. As our previous flight we had pre-booked the basinet and the online check-in didn’t work, however we got the bulkhead seats without problem, this time on the other side 31HK & 32HK with a great view of the beautiful high aspect ratio wing. Check-in was a breeze, take note Glasgow!
We did some last minute shopping in the Disney store (as if 2 weeks hadn’t been enough) and I took a wander about the airport for a shop that would sell an iPad but couldn’t find one so we took our last drinks of water before ditching it all and making our way through security which took 20 minutes.
I got a very good beef wrap from the Outback Steakhouse and while Mrs Fuzzy did some last minute browsing at the duty free I wandered down to the gate with the kids to find they were already boarding. G-VKSS and G-VSXY were sitting either side of a Gatwick Jumbo, we would be on G-VSXY Beauty Queen this time. The boarding staff spotted the baby and tried to get us on early but I was quite happy letting the boys burn off energy in the departure lounge and boarding last.
We noticed it was a Glasgow crew onboard this time, the doors were closed and the plane being pushed back before we finally got an infant lap belt from them, this might seem like a minor issue however the baby is b/f so while he’s mum on it’s a 2 man job to get the belts sorted. The plane took off on time on 17L, turned left and headed up the coast. Once in the sky dinner was served rather promptly and it took a while for somebody to appear with the basinet before I could put the sleeping baby down to eat it.
Chicken korma went down well with everybody, clean plates from the kids! The kids were less hyper on this flight, we think part of the reason was due to the choice of soft drinks, we restricted their Diet Coke caffeine intake and gave them water. Why can’t Virgin offer Ribena or Fruit Shoots as an alternative? So we actually got them to sit down and watch a film and some TV and a game of head-to-head Battleships before shock-horror, they actually fell asleep! Result! I even managed to read the complimentary newspaper, unfortunately it was the Daily Mail.
Like the outbound flight I couldn’t fault the seats, extra legroom for no extra money (except £130 for the baby) and the central galley was available for making up bottles and gave the extra space to wander about to get him to sleep, although I did notice the lighting was brighter here than the other A330 so again I took to wandering the darkened passageway behind PE.
The ride home was occasionally bumpy, this was expected, and the seat belts were on and off every 30 minutes (I wear mine all the time anyway) and there were only small queues for the toilets that didn’t affect the seat location. We had one issue with the CC, the mrs had a headache and went back to ask for a paracetamol, the seatbelts went on just after she got up but she didn’t know this (they hadn’t put out a call due to sleeping passengers). While one of the CC kindly went to fetch her one another came up and told her sternly to return to her seat. We felt there was no need to talk to her in such a manner, yes we realise it’s for safety but she was unaware about the seatbelts and was under the direction of another cabin crew member. Generally we found the Glasgow crew to be less friendly than the Gatwick crew we had on the outbound but I still chatted to a few at the galley while walking about with baby. Our baby was very well behaved and slept most of the flight despite being consistently woke up by another toddler who screamed the place down every hour.
However the flight back was a breeze, typically for a Glasgow flight we’d drunk it dry and by the end there was no beer, no gin and I had to start on the wine! The cold breakfast box was a bit disappointing but I didn’t feel like eating anyway so I took it home (in the end it was nice but you can’t beat a cooked breakfast!) We were soon coming in to land at Glasgow, I had started packing things up when I felt the descent and was already getting the baby sorted onto mum for a feed to help his ears and getting them strapped in when the seat belt lights came on but this wasn’t quick enough for one member of staff. Lovely views of Loch Long, the Gare Loch, Loch Lomond and the Clyde with the sun rising on the way in, I haven’t done a NW approach into Glasgow before. I spotted a plane on finals ahead of us, then we were soon down on runway 23 on time, the 4 year old still fast asleep!
And that’s where the trouble started. The plane in front was a Thomas Cook A330 from Sanford, and there also a delayed Thomas Cook 757 just in from Turkey. Which meant 600 people unloading into the arrivals at 5.30am with only 3 passport controllers and no room for another 315. So the poor pilot had to break the news that he wasn’t allowed to offload us for 30 minutes. Poor planning Glasgow Airport!
So we sat tight on the plane, then when we did get off sat at some seats waiting for the queues to go down, we didn’t get out of the airport until 7.15am - we’d got out of MCO quicker than that!I hope the above doesn’t sound too negative, I’ve went into some picky detail that might help other people travelling with kids but this was a very good and easy flight especially with 3 young kids. If anything it has confirmed that we should be flying long-haul with Virgin from Glasgow in the future.
You will also note that we flew on G-VSXY, after we left it at 6am it was moved down to Gatwick and was involved in the incident a few hours later. Get well soon!
