Various views around the lounge

Overall, the Virgin Clubhouse experience was great. It is by far the best lounge in LHR T3 as far as I know, and probably among the best Business Class lounges around the world. The decor is either cool or pretentious depending on your viewpoint but it’s difficult to refute the fact that it is a nicely appointed lounge with plenty of amenities and facilities. The complimentary massage definitely sets the right tone for the flight and really was great. The only downside was the quality of the food, which really needs to be improved if it is to meet the high standards of rest of the lounge.


My ride to Singapore!

I decided to make my way to the gate early, roughly 45 minutes before scheduled departure time (and therefore 15 minutes before boarding time) in hope of snapping a few nice photos of the aircraft while it is parked. But it turned out I should have listened to the person checking my boarding pass as I entered the gate area – “Sir, you do know you can’t go back out once you come in here?” As soon as I passed the boarding pass machine, I realised I wanted to go back out immediately. Being a completely full 747, the holding area was hopelessly inadequate for the number of people that were waiting there and there were no seats to sit down on. I couldn’t even achieve the purpose of coming to the gate area early, i.e. taking photos of the bird, as there were no windows in the holding area! Talk about a waste of time… I could have been sipping on a nice mojito at the Cocktail Bar still. Arghh!

Trying to make the best out of – quite frankly – the crap prospect of standing around for the next 15 minutes in a massively overcrowded room, I approached one of the SQ-uniformed gate agents to see whether it would be possible to board a few minutes before everyone else so that I can grab a few photos of the First Class cabin still empty. The gate agent radioed the ground staff in the aircraft and was told I can board, so I proceeded to the aircraft.