Review of Virgin Atlantic flight London → New York in Economy

I was given a weeks annual leave from work to take in the last week of May and so looked online for somewhere to go for a few days to escape the wet cold UK spring weather, looking through Expedia I found that 4 nights in Orlando was reasonable flying out with Virgin Atlantic from LHR connecting in JFK to a Delta flight and then returning direct from MCO to LGW. this will be a short report from the first flight VS3 with another to follow for the Delta Flight down to MCO. as i slept on the return flight there will be no report for the VS16 back to London.

I started this trip by staying the night in the Doubletree By Hilton near to London Heathrow, this is a comfortable hotel a short bus ride away from Heathrow's central bus station, there is a hotel hopper bus that will take you directly to the terminals but this is priced at £4 with the public London transport bus stopping a short walk from the terminals priced at £1.50 and being quicker there is no point in paying the extra for the hopper bus.



I arrived at London Heathrow Terminal 3 at around 6 am just as the VS check in area was opening. due to refurbishment Virgin are using Zone B as a temporary check in area as their Zone A is refreshed. i was seen quickly by a friendly agent who asked if i was familiar with the process of connecting flights in the USA having to collect my bag and then dropping it with DL after clearing customs.
I proceeded through security and found a quiet place to sit in the departure lounge and caught up with some work e-mails and social media to keep me entertained until the gate number was posted just over an hour before the flight was due to depart.
Terminal 3's departure lounge has no windows and is just a large area with seats and some shops not a great deal of things to do and only people watching to keep you entertained.
once the gate was announced i made my way there and saw that today my flight would be operated by G-VBUG an Airbus A340-600 named Lady Bird.


once boarding started each passenger was given a bottle of water at the top of the air bridge I had chosen to assign myself an extra leg room seat on this flight as i was sat in economy, this turned out to be great value as the centre row of 4 seats there was me at one side and another passenger on the isle seat on the other side giving each of us two seats to spread out in.


on each of the seas was a blanket and a set of headphones.


standard economy seats opposite me.


a manual safety demonstration was given as we pushed back a few minutes behind schedule and soon we were up in the air,
the crew started by distributing menus to all passengers.



and then a pre dinner drinks round.
unfortunately the entertainment system on this aircraft was not working and so needed to be re-booted and then the crew contacted the ground maintenance people to seek advice as a third of the aircraft including me were without any entertainment.

lunch was served around an hour after takeoff i chose the spaghetti and meatballs that was very tasty.


better than it looked!

after the lunch service the entertainment was still not working but the flight service manager made an announcement saying they were trying one last re-set guided by engineers at Heathrow after a few minutes my tv came on and i was able to watch a film before the next drinks and ice cream round from the crew.
not having any entertainment was not a problem for me as i had loaded some films on to my iPad just incase there were any issues with the system as i had heard from others that this system on the airbus A340 fleet was not the most reliable.

around two hours before landing it was time for afternoon tea and I chose the cheese and tomato wrap.

served with Smile High crisps (potato chips)


landing in to JFK was on time and we were soon in to a fairly quiet immigration hall, i attempted to use the fast connect line as my connecting flight was due to depart in two hours but was directed through the standard returning ESTA line and the machine printed me out a ticket with a big X on it and so i joined a second line for a chat with an immigration officer by the time i had cleared customs there was 55 minutes until my next flight was due to depart. I proceeded to the Delta connection desk and dropped my bag for the next flight and was advised this would depart terminal 2 so I should use the air train to get there from terminal 4 where i was.

the air train as this was a Saturday was undergoing maintenance and so was only running around one way and so to do this i would have had to go all the way around JFK so i decided to walk over to terminal 2 and made it through security and over to the gate with 10 minutes before boarding.