This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
It was about 6pm and the UC check-in agent offered to try and move us onto the earlier VS45, but we declined the offer as we wanted to spend some time in the Clubhouse and eat properly before the flight.
T4 landside is a bit of a building site at the moment, but we found our way past the hoardings to the security checkpoint. The only oddity about the security process was the ID+boarding pass checker was asking everyone what their name was then checking this against the ID. Odd, as anyone travelling on fake ID is likely to be capable of remembering their “name”. When she asked me my name, I did want to reply along the lines of “you tell me as you have my passport” but thought better of it as I did not want to hear the snap of a rubber glove.
Picked up some duty free and wandered up to the Clubhouse. I think Virgin need to change the password for the Clubhouse wifi (or make it a little harder to guess) as there were quite a few people sitting on the stairs up to the Clubhouse all using laptops. I don’t know if JFK has free wifi, but the stairs seem an odd place to sit and use laptops when there were plenty of seats available by the gates.
Had a quick look round the Clubhouse then found the showers. The shower was very welcome to freshen up, but hot water would have been a nice addition – the water was stone cold, in both showers. Despite this, it was good to freshen up and change into clean clothes. Having showered we ordered Virgin Redheads to help us warm up again. Had a good meal in the Clubhouse and as we were eating the main course, G-VFOX arrived at the gate.
Wandered down to the gate ahead of the boarding call and were straight onboard. Turned left, bags into the overhead bins, sleepsuits picked up and changed into before the main UC boarding rush. As with the outbound flight, the suites were in pretty good condition and everything seemed to work. It was a short 6h11m flight time, with an almost full load of 303pax and 13 cabin crew.
After takeoff, some people in the snooze zone thought it was OK to stand up and start converting their seats to beds while the FSM was making her after takeoff PA announcement, i.e. a good few mins before the seatbelt sign was turned off. We were sat just behind the snooze zone, so asked to have a plate of cheese and a drink at the bar (in consideration for people in the snooze zone). Just as we were about to go to the bar, the seatbelt sign came back on due to turbulence. Again, a good number of people in UC seemed to think that the seatbelt sign did not apply to them. When the sign went off, we hot-footed it to the bar, had the cheese and a drink then returned to seats for sleep. Whilst at the bar, the crew had some half empty drinks to get rid of – one of the toilets next to the bar was vacant, so they just opened the lav door and tipped the drinks down the sink in there, then joked to us that we had not seen them do that!
One thing I really did notice on this flight was how noisy the Airbus is compared to the 747. Normally like to sit in the A-zone on a 747 which is nice and quiet, but the Airbus was as noisy as hell in comparison (and I am partially deaf). Despite the noise, got a few hours welcome sleep and woke up as we were passing over Dublin.
Passed on the offer of breakfast as was heading to Revivals when we landed. We were lucky and got a direct approach into Heathrow without entering a holding stack. Got some good views of London on the approach and we arrived on-stand about half an hour early. Before we had stopped moving at the stand, some pax were already standing up to start and get their stuff out of the overhead bins. I have never seen this much non-compliance with the seatbelt sign before (you always get the odd person, but this was a good quarter of the cabin).
Unlike the outbound flight, you saw a lot of the FSM on this flight. In her PA announcement she said she would be around the aircraft in all cabins during the flight. As a result, the service was as you would expect – they even remembered to offer the bowl of sweets before landing (unlike on the outbound).
Priority baggage worked fine and within 15mins lf arriving at the gate we were in Revivals. Does Revivals have air-conditioning? If it does, it was not working today, as the place was very hot. The lack of air-con defeated the purpose of an after landing shower to freshen up, as you were sweating like a pig after the shower. People in the main area of Revivals were using the menus as fans.
So all in all, this was a very good flight. The only negatives were not related to the flight, i.e. the cold shower in the JFK Clubhouse and the tropical climate in Revivals.
As always, time to start planning the next trip…
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