Hi all,

I just thought I'd share with all of you my thoughts from a flight I took from St. Lucia to LGW and back on Virgin Atlantic last week.

I flew "Premium Economy" on VA which was basically domestic coach type seats with a little more recline and a small footrest. The service is basically the same as economy, although you do get a glass of champagne when boarding. I requested and was seated on the uper deck on one of their older 747's ("Gatwick model") that they use on these "leisure routes." One big dissappointement was that, despite what seatguru says, there was no empower. I was not traveling on "leisure" but instead for a business trip, and thank god I had basically completed my work before boarding. In upper class, my collegue's empower was broken (maybe pulling a US style cutback that makes no sense ).

I was unable to get any sleep, it was a bit too cramped, but I've been spoiled by the A330 and the 767 Envoy seats over the years.

The IFE provided extensive choices but was a bit long in the tooth. They ran a loop of about 10 channels during the flight, but compared to the A330 (now that they are stocking it up with movies again) it was not as good. They did have a cool text messaging function (at $2.50 per text it could get expensive) and some games that were even 2 players (compete against another person on board). They also supposedly had a feature where you could call someone at another seat for free, but when I tried to call my collegue in upper class it didn't work.

The food was about the same as what I received from US on my flight from PHL-SNN last year in coach. It was by no means comparable to the meals in Envoy that I received from PHL-LGW on my trip last year, but the pricing of VA's premium economy is no where near the price of Envoy. The service was interesting, as going both directions they did a ton of work at the start, serving 2 rounds of drinks, then the meal with wine, then the after dinner drink followed by duty free (they actually have a lot of "retail therapy" on board). After duty free, however, it is up to you to get up and get drinks, as the service ends until about 1 hour before landing. I had a window seat so I had to ring my FA to get a drink (didn't want to wake the person next to me), which she attentively got for me so this wasn't a big deal.

All in all, I would have to say that I would much rather buy a US ticket and use a TA upgrade cert (which are still available but pricey) than fly VA in Premium Economy. Even Upper Class didn't seem to me to be that much better than US Envoy (especially if you had row 1), although I wasn't sitting there, just visiting my colleague. That said, VA is a very nice airline, the lounge at LGW was awesome and all of the employees were a real pleasure to deal with. Also, it may be different on their A340 or Heathrow 747's which are newer.

This flight actually made me realize that US, while not the nicest for TA travel, is at least competitive IMO. VA has a good rep and from what I saw, US isn't THAT far behind in terms of service.

Sean