A343 Refits - Comment Rcvd from VS

[HighFlyer]

Please see below, email i recieved today from VS, may be of interest to some

Dear Sarah

Further to your email below, I'm sorry it's taken so long to get back to you. We had to wait for information from various departments and this took some time to collate.

We've been advised:

"Yes, we are fitting out 5 of our A340 - 300s with our new Upper Class Suite. These are:

G-VHOL - Jetstreamer
G-VSEA - Plain Sailing
G-VAIR - Maiden Tokyo
G-VELD - African Queen
G-VFAR - Diana

We will be increasing Premium Economy to 35 seats. Unfortunately we
are not able to add a toilet, although we did try to.

The remaining A340 - 300s are due to retire from the Virgin Atlantic
fleet during 2006."

Kind regards,

Mark Henderson
Contact Centre Customer Services Team

Dang!! No toilet - ill still hate them then!! [:(]

quote:Originally posted by HighFlyer
Dang!! No toilet - ill still hate them then!! [:(]

They might include a nice shiny bucket? :D

Cheers

Michael

quote:Originally posted by mcuth
They might include a nice shiny bucket? :D

Maybe they'll just ask you to step outside (making sure you turn your back to the wind)

No confirmed dates yet then for entire fleet being UCS? Guess sometime in early 2006?

Phil (Buffy)

Hi Sarah

Thanks for the info It's nice to have it confirmed after all the speculation.

Cheers
Alan

thanks for sharing that Highflyer

It would be nice if VS could designate which routes the UCS A343's will fly, althoough I understand planes can go tech etc.

I might be flying the the VS23 next year, and it would be nice to know.......

Interesting also that PE is being extended - I wonder if this means that the new PE seats will be also be installed?

Well done Sarah!

The lack of a dedicated toilet in PE is a real bummer!

cheers
GO

It is very likely that the Premium Economy cabin will have the new Kash seats. The "old" style of seat is no longer made.

However, I wouldn't be too optimistic that the IFE will be changed from Odyssey to v:port.

It is a shame that space could not be found for a toilet in the Premium cabin although with the number of seats increasing, those travelling in Premium will be closer to the toilets in the main cabin

At least Arcadia will only be on 4 aircraft out of the whole fleet

Jetstreamer, nice to see that "your" A343 will stay in the fleet

Yes it's good news that my namesake is not going to be retired just yet. [8D]

Since there will only be 35 suites maybe row 7 and 8 will disappear and that upper class toilet will be be for PE guess we will have to wait for exact seating plans!

interesting, but seeing as there are only 28 J2000 seats in the "front" section of the A343, I doubt they would be able to squeeze 35 suites in that space. It must overflow to where rows 7 & 8 currently are?

From the A346 and B744 layouts there are normally fewer suites in a section than what J2000 had.

Maybe the PE section is being pushed back rather than forward - does anyone know how many Y seats there will be on the UCS A343? - perhaps that will give us our answer!

Rich.

The new configuration for the A343 with UCS is 35J/36W/171Y.

As Richard has said, this would indicate that the Premium Economy cabin will extend further back.