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#962633 by mitchja
21 Oct 2023, 15:28
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I only booked this trip to Fort Lauderdale (MAN>ATL>FLL return) a few months ago when VS announced one of their sales together with the bonus miles promo.

Having flown to Fort Lauderdale quite a bit, I do prefer connecting in ATL rather than JFK. ATL is so much easier to connect through plus the overall flight time is slightly less flying via ATL. Even without a Clubhouse, ATL wins every time for me. The ATL>FLL flights are only about 90mins whereas the JFK>FLL flights are nearly 3 hours. JFK is always more susceptible to weather delays as well. DL op ATL>FLL flights around every 2 hours so there's usually plenty of availability. It's a busy route as it's always a 757 A/C and I've never yet not seen that flight less than completely full.

With the VS109 being a morning departure (well OK only just at 11:50 ;-) ) I decided to drive to MAN the previous day and try the new MAN T2 Holiday Inn hotel that opened earlier this year. I pre-booked parking in the T2 West multi-storey carpark which is directly linked to the terminal. Whilst the Holiday Inn is not directly linked to T2, it's a very easy short walk from the T2 arrivals ground floor level to the hotel. It's well signposted and easy to find.

An excellent hotel with great service and a fantastic Turkish restaurant. I can highly recommend the Holiday Inn and I've have no hesitation in staying there again. There's a new IBIS hotel next door as well. There is limited parking at the hotel so do what I did and just use the pre-bookable East or West multi-storey car parks both of which are linked to T2. The hotel does offer parking packages but I think that parking is off-site somewhere else.

After a nice leisurely breakfast at the hotel the following morning, I headed to VS check-in which is still in the same location in the new section of T2 check-in area. It looks like more new check-in desks are being added and I would guess the old check-in desks still being used by Jet2 will go soon? Visible building work is ongoing on the ground floor arrivals level as lots of that area is currently blocked off.

VS Upper Class check-in was very efficient and my bag was tagged all the way to FLL. Chaos at the entrance to fast-track security as a large group of MCO passengers in front of me couldn't scan their boarding passes to open the entry gate. The agent was adamant they had to go back to VS check-in and was telling them VS had printed boarding passes with the wrong bar codes (!) Mine worked without any issues. Those silly automatic entry gates to security just slow things down IMHO. Security was breeze with no-on in front of me. Straight through and in under 2 minutes and I was heading upstairs meandering my way through the never ending duty free shop and then up another level to the 1903 lounge.

No real queue to get into the 1903 lounge. A few pax in front of me but they were all heading for the Escape lounge. The 1903 lounge wasn't too busy this morning and I easily found a seat by the windows. The usual self-service food and drink offerings but with only 1 working coffee machine this morning. It was the breakfast menu being early morning.

VS still have up to 4 departures a day from MAN (1 or 2 x MCO's, 1 x ATL and 1 x JFK. The seasonal BGI flight started again this week as well. I use the Flighty app which showed up a B gate departure before the departure screens in the lounge showed anything. Not good as I suspected that was going to be a bus gate / remote stand. This later was confirmed to be the case. VS departures are announced in the 1903 lounge but do keep your eye on the screens as some of the announcements were barely audible. The mobile coverage is still as bad as ever in the 1903 lounge so use WiFi.

I headed down to gate B6 which is indeed a bus gate. Despite the screens around that gate all saying 'VS 109 now boarding' nothing was actually happening. After a few minutes pre-boarding commenced followed by group 1 and so I made my way onto the bus. The bus then drove to the opposite side of T2 where G-VRAY Miss Sunshine A333 was waiting. It was also chucking it down with rain that day so boarding at a remote stand using steps was not great. There was nothing in place anywhere from the bus to the A/C door to protect pax from the rain. That's an accident waiting to happen IMHO >-( Wheelchair users had to be lifted up to the A/C using a catering truck boarding using the opposite door.

I was warmly welcomed onboard and directed to 6K. Pre-departure drinks were offered whilst the cabin gradually filled up. Menus were handed out. We had 190 pax, 10 crew and 2 flight deck crew on today's flight. Upper Class was full. Even with buses and a remote stand we still managed to 'push back' 5 mins early at 11:45. It was a short taxi and we were airborne by 11:59. Todays' flight time t oATL would be approx 8Hrs 44mins.

Drinks and crisps were served shortly after takeoff along with taking meal orders. I'd already pre-ordered the express soup and toastie main meal option. You can of course also have a starter and desert with that if you want to. I had the carrot tartare which was OK but had a strange consistency along with Millionaires Delice (which is essentially chocolate cake) for desert.

The apple and parsnip soup and toastie were really good with the toastie chilli jam having a real kick to it! I settled down and watched a few films. The crew decided this would be another one of those 'let's turn the cabin light off to get the pax to go to sleep' day flights, though to be fair the crew were always on hand passing through the cabin during the flight. The afternoon bite meal service started being served around 2.5 hours before landing. I had the Beyond burger which was very tasty and went down well.

We landed at ATL ahead of schedule at 15:42 and parked next to G-VPOP who was already on stand having arrived from LHR as the VS103. A nice short walk to immigration which was heaving. I've never seen immigration that busy at ATL. It was even backing up out of the immigration hall with agents holding pax back and forming temporary queues. Thank goodness I have Global Entry!

I tried the new Global Entry app but because I was traveling on a new passport (which I had already updated in the Trusted Traveller Program account), I still had to see an agent to have my finger prints taken again and a photo re-taken which were all processed nice and quickly by the agent.

The longest wait was at the baggage carousel. Bags started coming off after around 10 minutes though there was clearly no sign of priority as my bag took a while longer to come off. Handed my bag back into the transfer area then went through security and headed to concourse A and the DL lounge there for a quick coffee and snack before departing to FLL.

All in all a pretty solid flight from VS just slightly spoiled by the remote stand boarding due to the rain. We got the same remote stand coming back as well.
#962635 by Murraymint
22 Oct 2023, 07:21
Thanks for the great TR - very thorough and informative. I would agree with your comments regarding connecting in ATL. I often see VS offering connecting flights through the more northerly airports in the US but in winter it can be a bit of a gamble- ATL usually more reliable.
After several bad experiences pre-pandemic using MAN, I swore that I’d never use it again. However, after failing to find any reward seats to MCO from LHR next April, guess where I’m leaving from? I’m even having to fly over from Cyprus with BA via LHR using some Avios to get there as EasyJets prices were ridiculous.
I suppose it gives MAN 2 opportunities to impress me by next year ;-)

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