This is a Trip Report from the Premium Economy cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
After a brilliant week at the Bellagio it was time to come home. For anyone looking at Las Vegas hotels, I can definitely recommend it! It has the best location on the strip – it’s the Times Square of Las Vegas. Whilst you may be able to get nicer and bigger rooms at some of the newer strip properties, the whole Bellagio package was perfect for us. The pool area is huge and very relaxing, although I was surprised how little shade they have considering how hot it gets. The public areas of the hotel are also always filled with throngs of people, day and night, which is testament to the pull the hotel still has. Other similar properties were a lot quieter inside, especially the Wynn/Encore.
The weather in Vegas had been strange for the week, but probably too our advantage. It was a lot cooler than it should have been and we had a day of rain which is very uncharacteristic. We still managed to get to the Grand Canyon South Rim although it was quite overcast, the view was still spectacular. I think my parents would have preferred a slightly bigger plane though! Things did get a tad bumpy on the way home flying through a storm.
We had arranged transfers with Virgin Holidays so was not surprised with an early pick up time of 12:30 for a 16:40 flight. We figured we were the first of many pickups….oh how wrong we turned out to be! Got down to the lobby slightly early to find the bus already there, so we boarded and off we went. We were the only pick up so straight to the airport. For anyone that doesn’t know Las Vegas, the airport is literally at the end of strip! 10 minute drive and we were there… a whole 4 hours before departure.
Noticed a large queue outside for curb side check in, but heading in side. There were a few people queuing in the economy line, but no one in PE or UC. We were called toward the UC desk. I had a quick look at flight stats beforehand and noticed the flight was full in PE and Y with 6 seats in UC. We were only on K’s but I thought I’d enquire about paying to change fare codes and upgrading with miles. Unfortunately this wasn’t possible as we had booked with Virgin Holidays so the agent couldn’t access our booking information (or something along those lines). Nevertheless we were checked in, informed of a 10 minute delay due to late arriving aircraft, and headed off to security, which wasn’t too bad. It must have been a quiet time for Terminal 3 as only a few lines were open. Had to use Nude-o-scope for the first time – not really sure what all the fuss was about. The operator doesn’t actually see the X-Ray, only a big green OK.
Into departures, and over 3 hours to kill with no V-Room in sight! T3 is a long thin building with gates on one side, and shops/food places on the other. It’s perfectly acceptable, with loads of seating areas and free Wifi. Bit of duty free shopping, a Burger King and some browsing on my iPad and boarding was called about 30mins before departure. Slightly annoyed to see English Rose – no billboard livery for me but hey ho. Priority Boarding was strictly enforced, with Upper first, then downstairs PE, followed by upstairs PE. Two bridges in use, with Upper and downstairs PE using L1, and upstairs PE and the economy using L2. Upstairs and back into exactly the same seats we had on our outbound, pleased to see a bottle of water waiting for us this time along with the amenity kit.
Sparkling wine and orange juice offered again, along with a newspaper (Daily Mail or
. I noticed the lady sitting in front of me receiving a lot of extra attention from the ground crew and cabin crew. Turned out she was a nervous flyer. I have to say that all the crew were excellent in making sure she was as comfortable and calm as possible. Any slight wobble of the plane and she would grip the chair, but a crew member would be there in seconds, regardless of what they were doing, to make sure she was ok. The pilots also stopped by a few times throughout the flight making sure she was OK. Kudos to Virgin, whilst I may not have the recipient of all the extra attention, it impressed me none the less. Pushed back slightly late from what I remember but expected to make up the time in the air. Another bursting at the seams flight into the 460’s again I think! There were people sitting on the jump seats at the back of the bubble once more. There was a manual safety demonstration, which got my Mum worried that the IFE was broken, lucky her V-flyer son knew otherwise
. Once into the air service then began with a hot towel and drinks with pretzels. One male and one female cabin crew who were both smiley, cheery and sincere in their service, you couldn’t ask for much more really. Dinner soon followed, with another drinks service as well. Menu was a follows:
Starter
Prawn Cocktail with Maire Rose sauce and romaine lettuce
Main Course
Thyme-roasted beef with potatoes
Roasted chicken thigh with buttered peas and mash
Sun-dried tomato ravioli with marinara sauce (V)
Dessert
Treacle tart
I had the thyme-roasted beef and it was surprisingly tasty for a plane meal. Similar to the outbound after dinner liqueurs were not offered – not sure whether I was unlucky on these flights or whether they just don’t bother doing it in the bubble for only 20 passengers.
The rest of the flight was uneventful. Watched some more films on the excellent IFE, those bigger screens in PE are very nice.
I thought breakfast was served quite early, I can’t remember exactly how many hours before landing, but I remember thinking afterwards that they had plenty of time after clearing to still do all their usual activities. I think breakfast should be left as late as possible to maximise sleeping time. Breakfast itself was adequate. It’s not going to win any awards, but it’s certainly an improvement on the breakfast bar that Economy passengers get given. I feel especially sorry for those at the back of the bubble who have to deal with the smell of a cooked breakfast!
Breakfast menu
Scrambled eggs with bacon
Caramelised onion and ricotta frittata (V)
Landed on time and quickly on to stand. Economy passengers downstairs were not held back so it took a while to get off the plane. Immigration was absolutely heaving, with the queues snaking outside the hall and down the corridor. Once we were through that we then had to deal with an hour wait for our luggage. 3 out of 4 cases came out pretty sharpish, but we waited an hour for the final bag to come off. Priority baggage clearly not working very well as our last bag came out well after the rest of the PE/Upper bags.
All in all a perfectly good flight. I still stand by feelings that PE is an excellent product and well worth the small price premium over economy. I would even argue that for such a long flight it should be considered the minimum. Las Vegas was great, and a great blow out before embarking on my career.
