This is a Trip Report from the Premium Economy cabin
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We left home with 2 kids in tow for a fortnight in America visiting relatives and doing the tourist thing. My children are quite young (aged 5 and 3) but they did fly once before 2 years ago.
I had booked a meet and greet service from Purple Parking to save hassle, although it gives you a different kind of hassle- trying to arrive bang on time. From where I live it can take as little as 45 mins to arrive, or about 90 mins on a bad day. We were running early so I slowed to 60 mph with half a mind to just go to Heston services to spill time. Then the traffic slowed badly. We arrived bang on time for a change, with the driver outside T3 waiting to greet us.
Check in was quick and friendly. On to security and we stumbled upon the "family lane" which was short but stopped for 5 minutes or so for some reason. But I love the fact that the metal detector was adorned with a cartoon appealing to children saying "To the planes"
We put our youngest child in a nappy for the flight, for whilst she is toilet trained she can give short notice of the need to go, and may not appreciate that aircraft have queues, or turbulence might mean she can't go, so I like to put her in a precautionary nappy. (Bottom set to "armed" but no cross check necessary, if you wish
). (Despite this I deliberately make a 2 hourly pilgrimage to take the children to the loo just in case we get kept in our seats, and it seems to work fine.) Anyway I digress.After a snack and shopping, the gate appeared (18) and we made our way. Whilst on the travelator we got our first glimpse of our vessel for this voyage- v-fab (Lady Penelope), a 747. I also got a glimpse of rather grubby and what looked like cracked paintwork around the tail fin and suddenly memories of a tail fin related episode of "air crash investigation" were forcing themselves into my head, but I duly banished them and we reached the gate and sat with a good view of the front of vfab, which unlike its rear, did indeed look fab.
Whilst explaining how and when we can get on the plane to our children, who were enjoying looking at the plane, a nice lady came round and gave out the kids pack. They loved it. Its quite a good bag and has a books, pencil, sweets, bracelet, etc in it. Fantastic.
We boarded and my deep seated guilt of bringing children into PE was relieved by the quantity of children boarding including another toddler and newborn in PE. Phew.
My kids just wanted v-port straight away. Having their own tv was the aspect of the flight they were most looking forward too. (in fact my 3 year old enquired as we checked through the gate, "does this plane have the television?")
V-port was going to be a bit of a let down, but first the safety briefing. Both my children had flown before, 2 years previously but this time my 5 year old was a bit inquisitive and wanted to know why those masks come down, and where from. As the video instructed on the brace position, she said she did not want to make an emergency landing and I could see a worry in her face that she'd not had last time. So I distracted her by looking at the other planes parked up in LHR and boy quite a few have dirty backsides so to speak, so not just ours!
Once airborne my kids just wanted the v-port to start. V-port was being naughty and had to be rebooted.
Ipod to the rescue and one child happily watched a film whilst the other played games. These things are worth their weight in gold to parents.
However v-port soon came up just as dinner was served, and had slow menus but the streaming when you got to it was fine. (revealing a little about how it works.) 15 minutes later my screen went blank then returned to the welcome screen which froze. After the crew performed a local reboot of my screen all was fine.
I have to have a gluten free diet, which I am thankful that Virgin do offer a gluten free meal. It was chicken, some veg bowl of highly oinioned salad and a gluten free crumble, in rather a different style to previous flights, usually the gluten free meal is plain, which might be a safe option for special diets, this time there was some sauce on top of the chicken. Everything was well presented as per the new pe dining layout.
The Kids had pasta Bolognese plus carrot sticks and dip and a chocolate desert. They loved it.
The Crew were very good and pleasant throughout the flight and delivered an ice cream run in the mid afternoon. High Tea was served later on in the flight and we expected to land at 4:05 according to imap but finally landed at 4:16, but still much earlier than expected.
We were determined to make the most of the ability to get off the plane and into immigration quick. Last time we had to wait until everyone had disembarked in order to collect our push chair. Not so this time and we managed to get through immigration and customs in about half an hour, but then we found our re booked car to take us to the hotel was late and would be another 45 minutes. The only consolation was that there was a massive and slow queue for taxis, and I don't think that a taxi would have been quicker.
So all in all good flight....
Later during the trip, I asked my children which bit of the holiday they liked the most. My 5 year old said watching "Alvin and the chipmunks" on the plane. Ok.... maybe we didn't need to travel so far, I could have just bought a DVD...
My 3 year old also said "the airplane", so I asked whether she meant the television too.
"No, The toilet" she replied
. I can't say the aircraft toilet would be my holiday highlight, nor my flight highlight, but I'm not 3 years old....
