Depending on how often you travel, being a member of multiple airline loyalty programs
can make it challenging to redeem any hard-earned points and miles.
Sometimes points can only be used for certain flights, and they are usually only be applied
to just part of the airfare.
However, the traveler in today’s flight review was determined to finally put their
Air France-KLM “Flying Blue” points to good use after accumulating them over the
past four years.
This is what prompted them to book a one-way flight from Vancouver to London via Seattle.
This review will examine the long-haul portion of the journey: A Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787-9
service from Seattle to London in economy class.
The flight was overall quite pleasant, but had its fair share of issues and quirks.
So, if you’re interested in finding out more about the flight experience with this
UK carrier, we hope you’ll keep watching!
First, let’s go over some background on the flight booking.
To get to the actual flight- perhaps starting from the boarding procress, please feel free
to skip ahead to THIS point in the video.
But, as mentioned, this flight was booked using “Flying Blue” miles.
The Flying Blue program is mainly used by Air France and KLM, but also Kenya Airways.and
a few smaller airlines.
Additionally, members of this program can earn miles by flying on eligible flights operated
by SkyTeam member airlines.
In this situation, our traveler redeemed 34,500 miles to fly one-way from Vancouver to London
via Seattle.
Taxes and surcharges paid in addition to the miles came to $156 Canadian dollars- which
equates to about US$117 at the time of this video’s production.
This was our traveler’s second attempt in redeeming their miles for this particular
trip.
The first attempt saw the loyalty program deduct their points and issue a reservation
booking code, but apparently no actual eTicket was issued.
This problem was only discovered after it was noticed that one leg of the flight had
completely disappeared!
Flying Blue customer service couldn’t explain how the error happened, and so they ended
up refunding points and instructing our traveler to book the flight all over again.
It’s extremely fortunate the error was noticed on time, but if I hadn’t, then it could
have been a really messy situation at the airport on the day of departure!
But moving on to the day of the flight, our traveler first flew from Vancouver with Delta
Air Lines- or a Delta Connection service operated by SkyWest Airlines to be more precise.
Unfortunately, our traveler experienced some issues checking-in for the first flight.
They had been issued a boarding pass, but with cryptic error messages that popped up
afterwards.
Clearly, Delta’s reservation system was having some issues and even the gate agent
at Vancouver International Airport was unable to solve the problem.
However, being a sharp and experienced problem solver, the Delta check-in and gate agent
- whose name was Sandy - fixed things up and directed our traveler to continue airside.
Sandy stayed on the phone with Delta Air Lines and even offered to put our traveler on an
earlier flight to Seattle since there was enough time!
The connection could have been a tight one, with a transfer time of only one hour.
Of course, considering the fact that major Canadian airports have US Customs pre-clearance,
immigration wouldn’t be an issue transferring through Seattle.
However, there was definitely some nervousness due to an unfamiliarity with Seattle Tacoma
(Sea-Tac) airport and the fact that terminals were separated by shuttle train.
In the end, gate-agent extraordinaire Sandy worked her magic and put our traveler on the
earlier Delta service to Seattle -eventually providing an additional three hours of connection
time.
Despite an unfamiliarity with Sea-Tac, it was nice that Virgin Atlantic had published
a quick reference guide for connecting from a Delta flight to its VS106 service.
Additionally, there were some YouTube videos of people taking the people-movers between
terminals that helped to cleared things up.
Getting off our Delta Connection Embraer E175 flight from Vancouver, transferring from Seattle’s
B Concourse to S Concourse was extremely smooth.
This required walking to the end of the B concourse, descending down two escalators,
and taking the people-mover to the S concourse.
The S gates exist at a satellite building away from the main terminal.
This relatively small facility appears to mainly serve long-haul intercontinental flights
and can be covered on foot end-to-end in less than five minutes.
As far as this building is concerned, seating and charging stations were plentiful, while
toilets and drinking fountain facilities were easily accessible.
It should also be noted that connecting to the airport’s WiFi was extremely easy - with
no annoying steps for registration required.
Soon enough it was time to board the aircraft.
The flight would be operated by an eight year old Boeing 787-9 registered G-VOOH, nicknamed
“Miss Chief.”
Boarding was extremely fast, with gate agents being extremely friendly and enthusiastic
with their announcements.
Indeed, the speed of the boarding gave a strong indication of a less-than-full flight.
Stepping onboard, we headed back to row 63, and seat 63K.
Apparently, our traveler would be one of the few passengers that would be seated in this
section.
Once boarding was complete, it’s estimated that, at least in the rear economy section,
that the load factor was around 40 to 50%.
In fact, our flight reviewer had the row of three seats to themselves, with only one person
in the row in front, and no one assigned a seat in the row behind.
On that note - let’s move on to the 787 economy class seat we would be spending nine
hours in!
As a first time traveler with Virgin Atlantic, it was interesting to our flight reviewer
that the airline really leaned into its red theme and branding.
Seats are a mix of bold red and a brownish-maroon color, while the 787’s leds were most often
configured to be a deep purple color.
Getting seated, the seat pitch was more than enough to feel comfortable.
The vertically adjustable headrests are big and plush and have non-adjustable wings that
jut out on each side.
Our flight reviewer found these to be a bit much - and would have preferred something
a little simpler.
For our traveler, the size of the headrest forced their head to be too forward than was
comfortable, as they would have preferred to tilt their head back a little.
Seat recline was decent and there was nothing too special about the tray table.
Like many airlines these days, the seats come with a little metal nub for hanging coats
and other articles of clothing.
Finally, seats come with seat-back pockets complete with an emergency card, duty free
shopping catalogue, and inflight magazine.
As our reviewer had experienced with other airlines, the IFE box placed under the seat.
The one on this flight consumed about a quarter of the under-seat area at the window seat.
This didn’t seem to be an issue for the aisle seat, but in our cluster, the window
and centre seats both had these boxes.
While this would normally be less than ideal for someone who wanted to keep their laptop
bag close-by, the empty adjacent seats meant that there was plenty of room to store bags
and stretch out!
The inflight entertainment system appeared to be fairly modern and responded quickly
to touch.
While the screens aren’t the largest, they are bright and of good quality.
These systems also come fitted with a USB-A port and a single-prong headphone jack.
In our experience, many modern systems can tilt to compensate for seat recline, however
the screens on this aircraft lacked this feature.
For the content held within the IFE, the choice of movies to television shows to games was
extremely diverse.
To our reviewer’s surprise, it was nice that passengers could provide feedback on
whether they enjoyed a show or not - ultimately feeding into a calculated average-satisfaction
score.
Unfortunately, the moving map feature, named the “SkyMap” wasn’t functioning for
the first portion of the flight.
Unaware of when exactly it became functional, our reviewer did get a chance to check it
out during the last 35 minutes of the flight.
Another glitch that was discovered concerned a single album that our reviewer tried to
listen to, as it was clearly not what it was labeled to be.
But, other than our traveler not being able to listen to some Billie Holiday, all other
albums that were played in the IFE seemed to be correctly labeled.
There are two things that could be said about the USB port.
The first is that it’s quite interesting that this port is apparently not just for
charging.
Going through the IFE menu, it looks like there’s an option for passengers to connect
USB drives to play content on the inflight system.
Unfortunately, without any USB drive in their possession, our reviewer was unable to test
this feature.
The second point about this USB port is the fact that sometime after reaching cruising
altitude, device charging seemed to stop.
While on the ground and shortly after takeoff, charging appeared to work fine - until it
didn’t.
To make sure it wasn’t just their port or their cable, our reviewer tested the neighboring
IFE, and was able to charge their phone using their power bank.
While the few non-functioning features detracted from the inflight experience, there was a
single glitch that was actually a great benefit for to our reviewer and their fellow passengers:
Free wifi!
Connecting to the Virgin Atlantic network, the browser automatically opened to the airline’s
page.
After clicking on connect, the expectation was that it would provide a page with different
plans and steps to take payment.
It looked like the system was trying to take passengers to another page which never actually
loaded.
Despite this, our reviewer’s social media and email notifications came flooding in,
proving that they were indeed connected to the world wide web.
We’re not sure if this wonderful little glitch was the result of a specific operating
system or device, but our reviewer was using an iPhone to connect and also managed to connect
(for free) with their Apple Macbook.
To confirm that was indeed a glitch and not some promotion, we asked a flight attendant
about it.
The one that we approached confirmed that the service was supposed to require payment
- and upon hearing the news, told our reviewer that they lucked out and to enjoy the glitch!
Thus, our reviewer found themselves connected throughout the entire 9 hour flight - posting
images of their journey as it progressed!
Moving on, the inflight service began with a small snack and beverage service 20 minutes
after takeoff.
This consisted of a package of pretzel snacks and a drink.
The main meal came about an hour later.
Curious to see how the airline handled special requests, our traveler pre-selected the “Asian
Vegetarian” option as part of their booking.
Having fallen asleep after reaching cruising altitude, our reviewer woke up to find their
special meal in a box, sitting on the tray in front of them.
As for the rest of the cabin, flight attendants at this point had just begun the general meal
service- which consisted of a chicken option and a vegetarian pasta option.
As for the special pre-selected meal, it consisted of rice with steamed cauliflower with curry
spices, okra, and green lentils.
Adding a little more spice, two slices of jalapeño peppers were placed on top of the
rice.
Accompanying this hot meal was a bread roll and butter, while dessert was some kind of
coconut-pudding-jelly dish topped with small bits of pineapple.
Everything was delicious although the hot meal came fairly bland.
In this case, the lack of saltiness seemed to be intentional, and was easily fixed with
the packet of salt that came with the cutlery.
A few hours after this, sometime during the middle of the flight, crews came through the
cabin to offer water or orange juice.
Then, about 90 minutes before landing, passengers were served breakfast.
Coming in small boxes, this consisted of a very thick and rich yogurt, a pastry (pain
au chocolat to be precise), and a blueberry-granola cookie product.
The yogurt was quite nice, and the granola-cookie product wasn’t too bad either.
However, having been refrigerated, the pastry was cold and stiff, which made it quite unpleasant
to bite into.
Another thing our reviewer wanted to mention was their selection of a window seat and the
issues that came with it.
The traveler in this review enjoys taking photographs out the window and was excited
to do the same for this trip.
Thus there was a small dilemma for this trip.
Knowing that it was a redeye flight over the arctic circle during the winter, there would
have been a chance to capture the northern lights out of the left side of the window.
However, having had a few landings at Heathrow where the aircraft from the east and flew
over the city, our reviewer thought they might catch central london out of the right side
as the aircraft landed.
So, having already successfully captured the northern lights twice now, our reviewer chose
to try and get some aerial shots of central London this time.
Unfortunately, neither of these options would turn out to be possible.
As the cabin lights were dimmed for passengers to sleep, it was noticed that the Dreamliner’s
windows were locked to be black overnight.
This would have killed any chances of getting a good shot of aurora borealis in low light
conditions.
And then over at our reviewer’s right side window, ice crystals had formed between the
panes- severely obstructing any view.
Ultimately, however, this wouldn’t have mattered, since low cloud prevented any good
view of Central London below.
Wrapping up our review, our traveler came into this flight really excited to fly with
Virgin Atlantic and really wanted to like the flight.
Overall the flight was fairly enjoyable, but the number of glitches and issues certainly
detracted from the experience - well, except for the glitch of free wifi!
The headrest was a little bulkier than would have been preferred and it might actually
have been more comfortable without it.
Many of the glitches and issues I raised were overall quite minor and by no means ruined
the experience.
However, we feel it’s necessary to bring up all of these details to provide a comprehensive
flight review!
Looking back at the nine-hour flight, it’s clear that the airline puts a good amount
of energy into solid customer service and pleasant interactions.
Flight attendants were warm, courteous and performed their jobs well and so we would
wager to say that most passengers felt well-taken care of throughout their flight.
This was certainly made easier by the light load factor of the service.
But that’s it for our transatlantic economy class review with Virgin Atlantic!
Have you flown with Virgin Atlantic before?
Where did you go and on which aircraft?
Share your own experience of flying with the airline by leaving a comment!