VS PE LHR-JFK + Gordon Ramsay & Les Halles
Summary
I began to write a TR for my holiday to the Datai 2 years ago in EK J but gave up. Last year we visited 6 cities in the US travelling in J and that TR too remains unfinished. What can I say, EK has a J product that differs from aircraft to aircraft, the Datai is heaven, the Air New Zealand lounge in LA was the site of my ‘Manuka Honey Vodka incident’ and the UCS is nicer than many hotel beds I have stayed in.
This TR is about my recent trip to NY on Virgin travelling in Premium Economy. It is split into a number of sections (i) Preamble (ii) LHR-JFK (iii) Les Halles and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and (iv) JFK-LHR
Preamble
This was to be our first trip as a family. Mrs Baggage-in-hall and I were taking little Hand-baggage-in-hall (HBiH) on his first holiday, a short trip to New York. Mrs BiH’s parents were coming with us. They had visited NYC last year (briefly, as part of a longer US trip) and were keen to return.
Mrs BiH and I have got accustomed to travelling in J when we fly long-haul. It had been almost 3 years since we last flew Y and with an 8 month old child in tow, we didn’t relish returning.
An evening (and a bottle of wine) later, my fears had been confirmed. The perversely high premium fares between LON and NYC meant that we really couldn’t justify flying in J – close to £2000 pp was just too much. Both VS and BA would later drop their fares so that they were closer to the £1400 mark, but I had booked by then.
Our options came down to BA WT+, VS PE and Maxjet. I have no status on BA or VS, but I do have a BMI Mastercard which takes a fair whacking each month and in turn yields a large number of BMI miles. FT revealed that VS had the best hard product in PE but a widely variable soft, BA’s seats were okay and the service predictably good and Maxjet couldn’t always be trusted to fly their planes over the pond on the advertised day (since remedied it seems).
I finally booked 4 seats (and an infant) on VS. Once processed, I had a look at my booking on their website and saw that I was unable to select my seat. I rang the VS call centre and spent a great deal of time speaking to an agent who ignored almost everything I had to say – especially when it wasn’t the answer he script provided for.
As an aside, I don’t care where the call centre I ring is located, I don’t care what race, colour or creed the employee is; what I want is a properly trained employee who is empowered to solve basic and medium level issues and queries – this is an issue for employers and not the poor sod’s whom we speak to.
The agent I was speaking to had no idea if the A340-600 had a bassinet position in PE. The second thought it did, but did not where. The third told me that I would have a to book a seat for my infant. All three kept telling me to look on the VS website which had all the answers to these questions – it doesn’t, that’s why I was calling them.
A bit of research led me to discover that 18AC or 18HK were the seats that I needed, so I rang back to request them. ‘Sorry, we can’t allocate those, we can only put in a request for a bassinet’ was the reply. A little annoying as other airlines (eg BA) will allow you to pre-book such seats (even after the recent changes), but at least we had reached some sort of conclusion.
I gave up with the call centre and emailed VS Customer Services who appear to be based in the UK. I echo the points above, although located in the same time zone as me, I received replies that indicated once again a woeful lack of training and product knowledge. My query was that since I could only request a basinet, was I better off checking-in online (thereby selecting row 18) or at the airport? Was this essentially an exercise in getting to the airport before anyone else with a baby, or could I do something to improve my chances? Finally, was 18AC / 18HK the correct seat pairings?
Email one told me not to worry, my basinet had been requested. Email two had the OLCI process copied and pasted from the website.
Enough. Lets wait and see what happens.