This is a Trip Report from the Premium Economy cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
A bit of preamble first as I enjoy reading others…… stayed overnight at LGW following the drive up from the west country. Generally we have at least one minor disaster which usually extends our journey time by 2 – 3 hours, in recent years we suffered through the great snow of 2010, several road closures and a puncture. Amazingly we arrived at the Sofitel some 2.5 hours after leaving home – clearly a good omen.
I had done OLCI before leaving home, logged on at exactly T-24 but only managed seq 5,6,7 – grrrr!
I had emailed ahead and asked for a runway view room which we got. I could see a VS 747 on stand but couldn’t work out which one it was, my husband made me leave the window to go down to dinner so I was unable to continue further investigation.
Usual excellent stay at the Sofitel and it was up and out to the monorail. I think my little boy would have happily spent his two week holiday riding it backwards and forwards- he thought it was great.
We had done twilight check in, which was very easy, no queue so we headed to security through the premium channel which made me feel dead important and then on to the v-room. We were very impressed it was quite busy but we got a nice clean table, had breakfast and watched the planes through the floor to ceiling windows. I thought the food selection and quality was very good. The hot food was hot and the cold food was cold which is always a good starter for ten. Internet access was quick and uninterrupted and my son busied away the hour and a half in the children’s play area which he initially dismissed as ‘for babies’ and then following making a friend or two and getting on with colouring a picture of a trunki decided it wasn’t too bad after all.
Flight was called on time so we made our way to the gate (first mistake – didn’t make a note of the gate number – oops!)
I think it may have been 68. It was a fair old walk anyway, enough to burn off that delicious scrambled egg from the v-room.Boarded quickly and took our seats on the newly refurbished Ladybird. We were in 15 D,E & F downstairs. Now, having never flown VS, let alone in the bubble I can’t comment on whether it was better, worse or the same but for what we paid for the upgrade, and the holiday overall I was very VERY impressed. The seats were spacious, plenty of leg room and spotlessly clean.
We were offered sparkling wine or orange juice. The captain gave us a flight time of 8hrs and 55 mins. There were 444 passengers on board. We pushed back at 11.30am, had a small wait to get on to the westerly runway and took off at 11.45am.Quickly after takeoff we were given hot towels, amenity kits, dinner menus and earphones. There was then a drinks service. The menu was as follows:
Starter – smoked salmon with crème fraiche and rocket.
Main – Lasagne al forno or diced chicken breast with mushroom and red pepper sauce, broccoli mashed potato and carrots or wild mushroom stroganoff with risotto.
Warm bread roll.
Dessert – chewy Belgian chocolate cake.
Wine (2011 Sicilian Chardonnay and 2011 French Shiraz) and water was offered with dinner followed by coffee.
So, my impressions and opinions on the food offering. Overall very good for an aeroplane meal, the ceramic dishes and proper cutlery were a nice touch. Not sure we need the table cloth, seems to get in everyone’s way and create more washing. However the linen napkin is preferable over a paper one. Coffee in paper cups is a bit easyJet but it didn’t really bother me. Although I know this topic has been covered previously….. why all the mushrooms?! I love mushrooms but three dishes where mushrooms are explicitly added is a bit strange.
Baileys and brandy offered then another drinks service and then we settled down to watch a film. The IFE was very good. A good selection of films and TV programmes. I use an iPad a lot so you really do have to touch (jab) the screen from time to time, there were also momentary freezes where you think you haven’t touched it hard enough and then you touch it again and it jumps about. Overall, I don’t think you could ask for much more from inflight entertainment, we were impressed.
Flight was smooth, cabin crew were hit and miss. Here’s where the excitement of flying with VS and the reality don’t match. They all look so fantastic, so smart and professional, it makes me want to run off and be a flight attendant. I headed up front to take a sneaky peak at UC, I spoke with the FSM and a male member of the crew who were brilliant, everything you would expect. The male CC was very proud that he had served HoneyLamb on several occasions and knew that he liked her G&T with lime (I hope I remembered that correctly, if not it would be my fault not his). However the lady we had in our cabin was surly, unresponsive and spent as much time as possible in the galley. Maybe she was having an off day or maybe my expectations were set too high and I imagined them all to be like the FSM and HoneyLamb’s friend.
As an aside, I imagined the UC loos would be better than they were. I asked CC if I could use the loo at the front of our cabin and she looked at me like I was mad and said ‘of course’. When I went in, I realised why, it’s exactly the same as every other loo with the addition of some cowshed hand cream. Big disappointment, I expected some sort of gold throne, never mind!
Afternoon tea was served around two hours before landing, it was the (in)famous cheese and red onion sandwich, which I thoroughly enjoyed and could have eaten three more of and the Great British cupcake which is not my thing (don’t like butter cream).
I sat next to a really nice guy on the flight, really funny and interesting so that made the time fly (excuse the pun). Before I knew it we were landing in rainy, windy CUN. Hurricane Ernesto was about to make landfall 250 miles south so it was a bit bumpy coming in but otherwise no problems.
The only complaint I would have is that there were not enough immigration forms on board. CC said we should have been given them at CI although no one was (I can’t believe the CI staff forgot to hand them out to the whole flight?!).
Anyway, CC said they had a few but not even enough for all of UC. Now you would expect UC to get them at least?! I wouldn’t have been at all happy if I had forked out all that money but c’est la vie.Overall the flight was great. I really wish I could fly VS every time.
