This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
We got to Boston Logan in plenty of time, the check in area was very quiet with four Virgin staff stood around in front of the desks, then more sat round doing nothing behind them. Collectively they all watched my partner and I struggle with our bags, double pram and two car seats. No one came to help and they just gawped at us.
Went to the upper class checkin desk and spent nearly 35 minutes waiting for the woman to check our bags in painfully slowly. They then said our car seats had to go in a big bag. Cue 10 min wait for a woman to go get a bag, but she got the wrong ones. Then another bloke went to take a look... another 10 min wait. Not an upper class experience in any respect.
If the Virgin ground crew in BOS had a collective IQ in double digits, I’d be shocked. Absolutely awful staff and I’ll avoid flying through there again with my family.
The TSA queue took about 40 mins to clear. The business/first line was about 50 people deep with one person working it. The standard queue was totally empty with 5-6 agents working it. We weren’t allowed to switch queues and had to stand there. BA special services escorted two parties of travellers to the front of our queue while we were waiting patiently, which p*ssed me right off too.
Went to the Club House once through security but the menu wasn’t up to much for the kids, so ended up in BK. We watched the planes out the window and the Heathrow flight on G-VNYC seemed to wait 40-50 mins for a stand to come available, as did an Alitalia flight. Glad I wasn’t on either of those planes!
Boarding soon commenced and the same dummies from check in organised it, so naturally it was a disaster. We managed to get onto the plane in an orderly fashion and found our seats.
I booked the “love seats” and 5K. All three seats were nice and the refurb makes the planes look brand new! Not bad for 20 year old air frames. A huge upgrade on the Air Berlin interiors (I’m aware they’re practically the same seats, but the new trim goes a long way). Row 5 was too close to the toilet for my liking and I wouldn’t book any of these seats again. IFE seemed good enough (and brand new) but none of us used it as we all slept.
We didn’t eat anything on board as we had something prior to the flight so can’t rate the food. Crew were absolutely brilliant, as always! CSM introduced herself and all crew were brilliant with my kids. This is why I keep flying Virgin!
Going back to the cabin for a sec, it’s incredibly cramped. The aisles are so narrow I have to shimmy down sideways. I’m 6 foot tall and the bed isn’t long enough for me so it’s super uncomfortable. All first world problems though and it’s much better than economy or premium economy - just not as good as the Virgin 747 or 787 cabins, imo.
We landed on time and parked at the furthest gate away from immigration so that was a lovely dash with two kids, hand baggage and no pram.
All in all the flight itself was OK and all four of us got some shut eye. Ground staff at Logan were dreadful and the new cabin while a major improvement, just isn’t as good as the Virgin upper cabins on other planes.