We booked to go to St Lucia for one week. As there are no flights to UVF from the regions, the choices were either VS from LHR or BA from LGW. VS won due to past loyalty and luckily the limited window of dates coinciding with the final week of VS operating the route before its summer suspension, as well as LHR being up to an hour less on the road from the north than it is to continue to LGW. As there was a sale on and armed with the usual FC discount, we booked a one week package with Virgin Holidays.
The day before at approx. 10am having loaded the car and whilst waiting for Mrs VS075 to finish getting ready, I idly checked my e-mails to see a number of e-mails from VS waiting in my inbox sent to me in quick succession informing me that VS221 the next day was cancelled due to "operational reasons" and we were automatically rebooked onto the next day's flight. Having taken this in, I got on to Virgin Holidays straight away to explain the situation. We were only going for one week and did not want to lose a day's holiday, as well as explaining that we had already booked into a hotel at LHR later that day ready for the following morning. The friendly and helpful agent asked me to leave it with him whilst he looked into alternatives, including options to connect via the US if necessary.
Within an hour, an e-mail dropped in my inbox advising we had been re-booked onto the BA flight from LGW the same day. Shortly after, the agent called me back to confirm I was satisfied with what he had done (we were) and issued a small refund to cover the extra costs we would now incur having to travel to LGW first thing the next morning, as well as upgrading our St Lucia transfer from a shared bus to a private transfer. He also confirmed we would still fly back to LHR on the VS flight a week later as booked. After repeatedly thanking him for rescuing the situation we headed in the car down for LHR.
This was a satisfactory outcome for us as we did not want to lose a day's holiday had we stuck with flying with VS on the Monday. Flying with BA from LGW was a case of "needs must", however it did mean an earlier than planned start the next morning to get to LGW.
We had booked a package at the Radisson Heathrow through Holiday Extras whereby parking for the duration of our trip was also included (the Renaissance where we stayed two years ago was the best part of £100 more).
Alarm was set for 5am, checked out at 5.45am and into a taxi round to T2 for a short walk to the bus station and onto a Flixbus service we booked on the way down for the 80min transfer to LGW. Due to the M25 closure, it involved a diversion through a very affluent Surrey village, but due to the time of day there were no hold ups and we were at the South Terminal by 7.30am - far earlier than when we would normally arrive, but with the closure and potential for issues we didn't want to chance it.
Having checked in online the night before, we joined the queue to drop off the bags, through security fairly quickly (are you paying attention MAN?) and then went for breakfast at Wondertree. Time was killed having a small mooch after breakfast and a much-needed Starbucks before heading down to the gate where G-VIIR was waiting to take us to St Lucia before continuing on to Grenada. Boarding was delayed as it appeared the fitters were doing some work to one of the engines and it inevitably led to a delayed departure. We pushed back just before 12pm and having joined the queue of various narrowbodies sharing the sole active runway, we took off.
First impressions of the WT cabin is that it looked cramped due to BA having densified the WT cabins on the LGW-based 777 fleet, however the legroom was OK and didn't feel too cramped once sat down. The IFE screen was big and clear and they had a very good selection of films and TV shows. So much so, I needn't have bothered loading stuff onto the iPad. One of the cabin crew advised quite a few people had transferred onto this flight from the cancelled VS flight.
Drinks were served about half an hour after take-off and I opted for the Brewdog Speedbird OG as I'm partial to craft beer and it's a hard beer to come by being exclusive to BA. The menu choices were a cottage pie (yes VS, it includes beef, so what's the problem?) or a veg moussaka. I opted for the cottage pie and it was quite tasty. The presentation was far superior to the austere offering a couple of years ago on VS. We had ordered a GF meal for Mrs VS075, however due to the late-notice booking we had missed the deadline to pre-order this and, naturally, there were no spare GF meals. However, the cabin crew did try their best by providing her with some spare cheese and other snacks that were GF and I donated my chocolate dessert.
After that, I settled into the flight by watching some of the vast range available on the IFE, including a few episodes of the new Frasier reboot as BA show a few Paramount+ shows on their IFE offering and a film which I had lost the DVD for years ago back in my uni days.
About 90 minutes before the end, a lighter meal in the form of a chicken pasty of a veg pasty was offered. I went for the chicken one and it was tasty. I found this to be better than the afternoon tea offering VS would otherwise offer.
Not long before we began descent, insecticide was sprayed across the entire passenger cabin before beginning our descent into UVF. Sitting on the left-hand side of the aircraft paid off nicely as we were afforded views of the Pitons on our descent.
On landing, I noticed the errant G-VRAY was on the ground. I had discovered this went tech on Friday and a rescue flight was organised for Saturday. With this and another A330 having gone tech in the US a few weeks prior, I can see why our flight was cancelled. It would seem repairs were carried out as G-VRAY flew back to the UK on that evening's VS222.
After touching down, disembarkation for those of us not continuing onto GND began and we were one of the last off, so there was a bit of a queue when we got to immigration, but not too long. Once we had cleared immigration, our bags were literally waiting for us as somebody had taken them off the belt. Reunited with them, we went out towards the Sun Tours desk that Virgin Holidays use in St Lucia. After clarifying the last minute change of transfer mode, a car arrived to take us on the 80min trip to Castries for the week.
Overall, it was a decent enough flight and we stand by doing what we did to ensure we got a whole week in St Lucia instead of 6 nights. I'm therefore genuinley curious to hear what others would have done if you were in the same situation as us: would you have taken the BA flight to ensure no loss of time in St Lucia, stuck with VS but lose a day or give up completely on the trip?
