VS085 MAN-LAS 26 APR 12 (Upper Class)

This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin

Ground Staff

Food & Drink

Entertainment

Seat

Cabin Crew

Well this trip was for my 50th birthday taking in San Francisco and Las Vegas. Tried checking in the day before but got the error message from virgin so no seq 1 for me. We left at 7am to miss the traffic on the M56 and surprisingly enough arrived quite trouble free. Check in was empty and we went swiftly through to the escape lounge which I must say it was disappointing to say the least(have been spoilt at LHR and LGW). We decided the bacon rolls downstairs looked nice and they were. Mrs F did a little shopping and we then decided to spend an hour in the lounge and have a drink.

The flight started ok and we were looking forward to the new service which was nice but shoed again a few inconsistencies like not having the new salt and pepper pots but overall I did enjoy the food and seet trolley but I can see how difficult this would be on a airbus aircraft.

I rated the crew as average as this is where I did have an issue it looked like 3 seats received an op-up and 2 especially were if I can put it mildley quite loud and seemed familiar with a female cabin crew in our sector somewhat to the detriment of the other 12 passengers at times. .

What I was not expecting was after the meal there seemed to be for a few hours a great party mood in the galley section between premium and upper class sections with great laughter between crew and some passengers from premium economy.I have to assume they were off duty crew as I did see non uniform people opening some draws and obtaining various items of food and drink .

After about 2 hrs of this and such noise that even wearing my Bose headset I was still hearing them and noticing some other upper class passengers disgust I popped my head round the curtain and told the group that I think their noise was too loud and some people wanted a little rest on this 10 hour flight.

Personally I was a little surprised that the FSM did not say anything which is why I believe they were more off duty crew than fare paying passengers.

When we were about 3 hours out the offending 2 passengers in upper decided then they wanted sleep the cheek of them.

So overall probably not the best virgin experience I have been on but did enjoy the new dinner service.

[buns]

Thanks for the TR

Yet another example of the flight appearing to be run for the benefit of the Crew rather than the passengers

Methinks a missive to Crawley Towers is in order - whilst I do not begrudge Off Duty Crew getting a few perks along the way, when this is to the detriment of fare paying passengers, then I think the line is crossed

buns

[honey lamb]

Like buns, I do not begrudge staff their travel perks but not to the detriment of the fare paying passengers. I was very fortunate that the one time I was on a flight where there were two pairs of crew in Upper they kept a really low profile which is as it should be. The FSM greeted them with hugs but that was the only interaction between them. That flight was one of the best I have ever taken

As Buns advises, feed your experience back to VS.

Well done as well on complaining en route.