VS023 LHR-LAX 24 DEC 23 (Upper Class)

This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin

Ground Staff

Food & Drink

Entertainment

Seat

Cabin Crew

After an fantastic time in the South and South West of England looking at Universities with my daughter and catching up with friends and family, it was time to return to LA for Christmas to be with the wife and kids. 24 hours before departure, instead of getting the online check-in reminder email, we got the dreaded email stating that our flight was cancelled for "operational reasons" and that we would find out within 8 hours what our new flight information would be.

Given it was 23rd December and we were due to leave the next day, we decided not want to wait 8 hours. A quick call to Virgin followed to confirm that we were now booked on VS 23 on the 24th December. We were originally booked on the VS 7 so that we would be home in time for a Christmas Eve family dinner, but that was now not going to happen.

We planning to travel to Heathrow via the Elizabeth line from our hotel in East London, but due to scheduled engineering works out of Paddington, both the Elizabeth Line and Heathrow Express were not an option so we took an Uber instead.

DTCI at the Upper Class Wing was seamless and after picking up some duty free it was off to the Clubhouse. The Clubhouse was fairly quiet. We hung out on the mezzanine level where the pool table used to be. We had a light bite off the lunch menu, a few redheads and all to soon it was time to head off to gate 29. The boarding process was really efficient and we were soon setting into our seats in the A aisle of our B787.

While I like the older upper class seats for an overnight flight, in my opinion that are an inferior hard product on a day flight compared to the A350 and A330-900 seats, in part due to the narrower width, limited recline and the smaller IFE screen. On the other hand the bar is a much better social space than the loft and the bar did get a lot of use on this flight!

I was welcomed as a gold member by name by the excellent FSM and quickly changed into a sleeper suit. We pushed back on time and were in the air quite promptly as dusk fell over a relatively quiet Heathrow. Even though this was a day flight, due to the time of year and our routing, we did not see any daylight during the flight.

The cabin service started promptly and the obligatory G&T was ordered. This was followed by the turkey Christmas dinner with a couple of glasses of red wine. The food was surprisingly good, not dry or overcooked as others have commented. After dinner, a couple of pax, including myself, ended up chatting at the bar. The cabin crew kept providing refills on the drinks, but before long it was time to take a quick a nap.

A light bits menu was served about 2 hours before landing which included some finger sandwiches and a cup of tea.

We landed early into LAX, with a quick taxi to the gate and then began the march to US passport control. We were able to use Global Entry so were through it no time, but even on Christmas Eve, we could see long lines for non-US passport holders. We waited less than 10 minutes for the bags and then it was off to get an Uber. Uber Black cars can still pickup next to the terminals at LAX, and as we did not fancy taking the bus to the Uber X pickup area at the other end of the airport, that was our option.

So we made it home for Christmas, over 4 fours later than expected. 261 claims already settled with Virgin. The cabin crew, led by their excellent FSM, did a fantastic job throughout the flight.

Until next time - Britsocks

Thank you for both of your TRs. You seem to have had good experiences in the air (even if you had an unfortunate cancellation) with the food being better than many have had recently. Glad you managed to make it back in time for Christmas.