Review: Virgin Atlantic Upper Class on the A330 fleet

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• Neil Woodhouse says:

  26 Jun26 June 08:02

  I love the way we are winging about the Upper Class on the Virgin A330 being awful (and it is being compared to the rest of the fleet) but a) we know it’s being replaced in the next 12 months and b) is still miles ahead of the BA equivalent!

  As a British airline, if this is as bad as virgin gets, then I think we’re lucky!!! I would much rather fly Virgin A330 any day over any BA business class …just a Shane they don’t fly to anywhere near the same amount of destinations!!

  • Alan says:

    26 Jun26 June 08:04

    I’m afraid I disagree. When I was sitting in the A330 seat highlighted above I was wishing I was in a CW seat instead, which isn’t as cramped around the shoulders! The 787 on the way out was comfortable though.

  • Will says:

    26 Jun26 June 08:22

    I’d much rather fly BA club than VS A330.
    In fact the lack of privacy and also a seat which has to flip to be a bed mean I’d pick BA over any VS upper class flight.

    Very over rated airline imho.

    • Leo says:

      26 Jun26 June 08:34

      Disagree. I’ve flown every version of Upper apart from this one – and fortunately it’s on its way out. In my opinion VS comes out on top over BA every time in all aspects. Apart from routes.

      • Johnny Tabasco says:

        26 Jun26 June 08:37

        Agreed 100%. Virgin tops BA in every aspect of everything bar routes.

        • Rob says:

          26 Jun26 June 08:51

          Club World is better than this seat (in the right seat). Any idea what it is like getting your feet hit constantly throughout the night everytime a person or trolley goes down the aisle? At least with CW I could have picked a better seat – all the A330 seats get your feet whacked. And the bar is f-all use on a 6 hour overnight flight.

  • Nick says:

    26 Jun26 June 08:24

    Give me CW over that virgin seat any day. For all its faults, CW at least offers a consistently decent bed.

    • Johnny Tabasco says:

      26 Jun26 June 11:11

      Well it wont be a debate to be had soon. The A330 seats in this current setup wont be around much longer so its a strange article really.

      For the record, we did a flight in Upper from Heathrow to Washington in May and it was 1-1-1 up until the day before we left. We got on the plane and it was 1-2-1. I refuse to let stuff like this ruin my enjoyment though. The plane and seat were tired but it was still a excellent flight and with brilliant service, as i always get with Virgin.

      I maintain its on a different level to BA all round.

      • Rob says:

        26 Jun26 June 12:56

        You had a day flight though. You wouldn’t have needed to sleep and, I would guess, never even bothered to convert the seat into the bed. That is a totally different situation to getting a seat on which it is exceptionally difficult to sleep for a red-eye service. I didn’t see a single passenger use the bar and very few, including me, bothered to eat either dinner or breakfast.

        Actually, I forgot to write about breakfast. The crew said that if we wanted breakfast we would be woken TWO HOURS before landing. This is on a flight which is scheduled at a touch over 6 hours. WTF?!

        I was hoping to write an article on the Virgin Revivals lounge at Heathrow but, as I had to be home by 10am to take my son to a birthday party, it wasn’t possible given that I landed 2 hours later than originally booked. I was grateful that I was ‘hand baggage only’ and could get straight out of Heathrow.

        • Johnny Tabasco says:

          26 Jun26 June 13:13

          My wife slept for 5 hours during the flight! There were no complaints from her. she is a good sleeper though (unlike me!)

          The breakfast thing is absurd though. I had to read that twice, doesn’t make sense at all.

        • Leo says:

          26 Jun26 June 14:50

          Rob I get that you had a bad experience – fair enough but I haven’t had anywhere near such a rough time on any of my flights on Virgin. I’m 6’1 and have no issues with the seats – I’m also a fair bit wider than you with 42″ chest. I agree the seats aren’t the same as reverse herringbone but I don’t think they are bad. I’m not bothered about the window issue and like Johnny T’s wife I’ve slept well (not the world’s best sleeper here). The Revivals lounge isn’t massive but you can indeed get your breakfast there if you want. Obviously 2 hours before landing makes the sleeping time virtually pointless.

        • Rob says:

          26 Jun26 June 15:39

          Virgin are spending a few £million ripping out these seats which are under 5 years old, so I don’t think I’m in a minority here. The new cabin will have 3 fewer seats than it does now so they are also giving up revenue by doing this.

        • Scallder says:

          26 Jun26 June 15:37

          Had a similar thing with breakfast flying back from Atlanta a couple of months ago. Politely declined and ate in the arrivals lounge. As mentioned below it’s not huge, however they have from memory 20 showers, so was able to get a shower as soon as I walked in and then breakfast afterwards (from memory it’s almost (if not 100%) identical to the breakfast options in the Clubhouse)

• Martin C-C says:

  26 Jun26 June 08:05

  Interesting, the last time I flew Virgin quite a few years ago, I got bumped to Premium Economy at the gate simply because I was on a reward ticket and another carrier’s plane went sick so all the business passengers came to Virgin. It wasn’t handled well so I walked. Shame because I prefer the service to BA. Also is this further evidence of Delaficatin?

• VS says:

  26 Jun26 June 08:16

  A minor gripe with the new format – which I readily admit is better – as found in the B787 and the retrofitted A330. The footwell of the seats are about an inch higher than the aisle, resulting in a prominent curved ramp. Despite knowing this, I have spent the last several flights falling over it – a terrible design feature.
  Also, is it just me or does the height of overall ‘booth’ surrounding the seats seem lower than that found pre-Dreamsuite? The sense of privacy has to a degree been lost.

• Jonathan says:

  26 Jun26 June 08:23

  Same thing has happened to me. It informs me of a change on manage my booking.

  My original flight from New York lands at 0630 so I go into work but now I’m likanding around 0800.

  My original flight is still operating so they’ve shifted me for their convenience only. It’s a reward flight.

  Do you know if there’s anything I can do? I read that vs only class it as a material change if it’s moved more than 24 hours and providing they’ve given sufficient warning they don’t have to give compensation

  • Rob says:

    26 Jun26 June 08:52

    That is exactly the same switch as I had …..

• Smid says:

  26 Jun26 June 08:59

  Ah, the great Virgin flight f**k up to the last year….

  I’m guessing you don’t get compensation because they told you well in advance. Burden of proof is probably on you, and proving a negative is hard…

  But you very likely did not get informed. Most people didn’t. Because this happened to, well, everyone flying VS in the last six months. Might not be everyone, but a stock take of v-flyer boards went along the lines “check your flights, the new IT system is crap” and loads of people coming back with changes.

  Could have been worse. I was never informed what they did with my flight. They changed the 13:00ish Boston flight to a 17:00ish one. So when they did this, they cancelled my flight, and STUCK ME ON A FLIGHT THE PREVIOUS DAY. I spotted this due to V-Flyer and phoned them up and got booked on a flight 3 hours later on the same day. However, I was never told.

  It’s been moved around, aircraft changed, lost booked seats, about five times since. The original thing involved retimings, but I think they just lost all the booking details at some point and rebooked in some crazy fashion. VS had an ALMIGHT IT f**kup in the last year…

  • Rob says:

    26 Jun26 June 10:11

    It turns out, because it turns out I had some cached data, that I could find out that I had already been moved on the Monday before the Friday flight. Whether I was moved weeks before that I don’t know, but it wasn’t a last minute change.

• Lumma says:

  26 Jun26 June 09:10

  Just out of interest, did you not have this flight on the my flights app and if you did, did that not inform you of the change?

• Liz says:

  26 Jun26 June 09:10

  Do Virigin flights not appear on the My Flights app – just checked and my upcoming Virgin flights do not show.

  • Clive says:

    26 Jun26 June 12:01

    No.

• totaltool says:

  26 Jun26 June 10:22

  O/T but Virgin related. Hit target spend on White Amex/Visa Cards several weeks ago and working towards spend target on Black Amex/Visa cards. No FC points posted yet. Do they often take a while to post? More used to avios which seem to be posted pretty quickly.

  • Genghis says:

    26 Jun26 June 17:54

    Post monthly on statement date

    • totaltool says:

      26 Jun26 June 19:07

      thanks Genghis, went through the spend for the White Card really quickly so haven’t even had a statement yet! Due in next couple of days.

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