Some say I've been lucky to travel so much through my life so far - over 1.4 million miles flown, over 100 countries visited plus every US state. But luck isn't the reason at all! I chose to spend money on travel, rather than on "sensible" things like houses, children or pensions....
During lockdown, I decided to create this channel to share videos about my travel experiences with the goal of inspiring, educating and entertaining. I review the flights I take and the places I visit, but I also share hacks and tips on how to travel better, for less...
I hate how airlines allow economy and PE customers use business class toilets and galleys. The airline crew hardly enforces it, it makes a joke of people who paid a lot for their tickets.
A great honest review, I enjoyed watching that. Shame the product wasn't as expected. The apology seemed almost pointless, sounds as thought they didn't even register the issue, so presumably nothing will improve for others. Ah well, why should they - people will still pay to fly with them so I guess there's little need on their part! Look forward to seeing where the next journey takes you :)
Merci Adam. I asked Virgin what they were apologising for and they replied the loss of food order and change of equipment - they also gave me 5000 points....
I think that the lack of storage space in the new seat is very annoying for many people but bearing in mind that the old style upper class seats ( which they are still using on plenty of planes) is notorious for lack of storage it is clearly something that Virgin do not believe to be important. One point that you made which is very important is that despite the "woke" agenda the staff tend to be very good. Whereas the ground staff at BA seem to have been selected from people rejected from working at prisons because they were too unpleasant.
Thanks Les - indeed this seat is a world away from the 787 coffin! I haven't found BA's crew to be too bad on recent trips but lots of people will agree with what you say!
Here's one contrarian view I have: I sometimes like long connecting flights (if the conditions are right for it) more than nonstop ones. For flights as journeys as MNL-London on economy class, a stopover at DXB, DOH, or AUH gives you a chance to take a breather and stretch. That is, if I have lounge access or the airport has a lot to offer. If it is really long, there is also the opportunity to see the connecting city itself.Another key advantage of taking connecting flights: you get more frequent flyer points than if you fly directly (so LHR-DOH-HKG will likely give more points than LHR-HKG) as I think points are handed out per individual leg rather than for origin-destination pairs.
Good point actually - lots of people feel like they're in a hurry so get to the destination as quickly as possible but slow down and enjoy the experience!
@@MattsPlanet not to put too fine a point but some carriers used to hand bonus miles/points for making a connecting flight (Northwest, now part of Delta did so). I know of some people who fly Singapore Airlines from Manila to the US even if Singapore is further from the US than Manila. Same with Emirates and Etihad to the US. By exploring connecting flights you will know that you don’t need to go on holiday in a carrier’s home city to enjoy that carrier. It widens your options if you live in a country where it’s major carriers are known to delay or cancel flights.
The three point belt is required because of the distance to the bulkhead in front of you. If you submarine or fly over the top of a lapbelt you have more distance to accelerate.
That is correct. Having only a lapbelt isn't a huge problem if the seat in front of you is close because you're just going to bang into it and stop moving. If the forward barrier is far away you could really go flying and your forward speed will be much higher. I don't want to use the "C" word but I think we all know what we're talking about.
You do sound as if escalating into despair, but that reflects my own experience that Virgin tends to win hearts over actual delivery. They ooze positivity and attract a higher proportion of experience travellers in their premium cabins. Which may explain me having seen more seriously drunk people in Virgin upper class than on any other carriers. Perhaps that justifies the lack of self-service bar that I'd witnessed before. Virgin know their market, service it well - but disappoint transgressors used to more.
No Matt. BA have enhanced their choice of onboard spirits. The absence of brandy inflight or inlounge annoys me no end as it is a spirit that doesn't attract a caffeine mixer.
Ah yes, the magical "enhancement".... My prostate doctors have advised me to avoid all caffeine so I may be the only passenger aboard looking for a spirit that doesn't need a caffeine mixer!!!
Brother, you need to back door the virgin flights book a KLM Air France flight operated by virgin then log in as yourself. Cheaper flights initially and then you can boost cabins internally
Thanks so much - that's a cracking bit of trivia!!! I still kind of wish they'd have commemorated the Queen without using that exact form of words though.... Thanks for the comment!
That is a very valid point, and thanks for making it!!!! Hopefully from this video you'd understand that as and when you can make it into a business cabin, there are better ones out there than Virgins!!!!
Is there a video explaining how to upgrade cabin class using Avios, on a ticket purchased with money? I've just wasted an hour on the BA website and am completely baffled. I'm looking 7 months ahead for an early April flight from London to Tokyo, returning end May. I think I have enough Avios to upgrade in one direction only from Premium Economy to Business. I found the 'pay cash and upgrade' page and also the 'reward flight finder' page. Neither one seemed to work well and kept returning different results on subsequent searches, sometimes saying no availability, sometimes showing me PE or Economy seats instead of business, sometimes showing me partner airlines and sometimes only BA, but most of the time saying 'no availability' across the board. And if there wasn't availability in one direction, it refused to allow me to look at upgrades for the other direction, even if I had ticked outbound or inbound. Is it just glitchy or should I have been booking 355 days ahead for any chance?
I actually talk about this a bit in the coming Sunday's video but not how to book it.... You need to make sure there's availability in the cabin you want to upgrade to, which is probably best done through the redemption screen, then "book and upgrade" at the same time, or you can book the lower cabin then when that shows up in MMB you should be able to add the upgrade - remember there's a 24 hour cooling off period if the reward seat disappears.... Or you can call and the agent will do it all in one go
Sorry to hear of the less than stellar experience, and hope you were soon recovered from the excess of butter. Thanks for taking us along. I remember my mum flying "upper class" really early on, and she was excited by it - times have clearly changed.
I purposely planned flights on A350 for my wife & I to & from JFK from LHR last year so we could sample the new upper class suites. Aircraft on both legs were switched to tired the old 787 suites. Felt like we’d wasted 350k points. Virgin weren’t interested in my complaint. I’ve still got 300k points to use but can’t bring myself to bother with them at the moment!
Indeed - I got lucky with this equipment change - the masochist in me perhaps wouldn't have minded a switch to the 787 as it would have made for a good video.... Anyhoo!!!! Paris or Amsterdam to quite a few places in the Caribbean on AF/KLM is around 100,000 virgin points return per person. Just saying....
I'd agree with your review, interestingly, in my opinion, the LHR - JFK route seems to deliver the worst service. The food has been on the decline for a few years now, though the seat on the A330 NEO provides a rather good sleep.
Thanks - your name suggests you're a virgin loyalist but I suppose it could mean other things too!!! I did sleep quite well on the return flight which I'll talk about in the next video in a week or two
@@MattsPlanet I could be a loyalist or many other things! I've had quite a few things go go wrong on my Virgin flights over the past 12 months, one biggie being on the JFK route. That being said, when I have reached out to customer services, they have put things right...rather generously.
Thank you very much. The ORC part of this video actually spared me the need to take another round trip on A3 (had to get in my 4 segments) when I missed my connecting flight from ATH to HER because of a 50 min delay caused by overbookings and subsequent screaming matches at the gate and in the aircraft. It actually only took them about 2 days to grant me the ORC. Tanks for that!
Nice video covering the Upper Class in 2024 Matt! I think for any long-time Virgin flyer, the A330neo will probably be a disappointment. I think the influence from Delta Airlines (compare to previous influence Singapore Airlines) has caused Virgin to lose its touch that it once held during the 1980s towards the mid-2000s. I hope SkyTeam will get them some more sway on the Atlantic market against BA. Regards- Tyler
Manchester airport is the main airport that I use to leave the country and T3 is the usual terminal that I end up using because of the Ryanair presence. Last year, I was traveling between T3 and Eindhoven. While T3 felt dated and cramped, Eindhoven felt like a bus station with security scanners and not in a good way. Next year, I have a fun combination of flights of Manchester T3 to Heathrow to Paris Charles de Gaulle to Tokyo Haneda. The masochist side of my brain probably kicked in when I booked that flight and now I have a good tour of bad airports before my trip to Japan to look forward to. At least the flight to Japan is on JAL.
@@MattsPlanet I don't think T3 has changed at all since I've last been through it. All I can hope is that it gets the T2 treatment sometime in my lifetime.
I've just cancelled my BA Premium Amex card. I keep getting companion vouchers but there are fewer and fewer rewards seats available to use them on. No longer worth the nearly £300 card cost
I believe an advantage of having an Aussie passport is you may get to stay in NZ as long as you like or at least without needing a visa, similar to what the UK enjoyed when it was in the European Community. Likewise, I hear NZ passport holders are the only ones that can enter Australia without a visa, technically speaking that is.
Good to see a non-Schengen-to-non-Schengen connection via a Schengen airport video. Pretty rare to see them unless one transits via Amsterdam or maybe Frankfurt. Between your Swiss and Austrian flight reviews, it looks like subsidiaries of the Lufthansa group (though not sure about Lufthansa itself) must be stars in the intra-Europe business class market.
Not long in NYC this trip sadly... It is so expensive.... I think the airports are quite similar really - both are pretty well connected. At JFK you have to faff around with the airtrain to get to the proper trains and subway, while Heathrow has the tube, Hex and Lizzie line right there.... But Heathrow is a bit further out, so its probably a wash all things considered.
Have carriers ever tried adding a ”Euro first” class where the passenger occupies the middle seat and the aisle/window remain unoccupied, and soft product will be as comparable to first class as possible?
@@MattsPlanet which is why I have not heard carriers offer it. Though by watching RU-vid videos, one gets the sense that if one is connecting to a long-haul first class destination from a euro business flight, some of the soft first class product features may begin at the point of origin like an escort to guide you. I don’t think BA does it for long-haul first at all.
Actually I would be thankful for Airbnbs as they have allowed me to take multiple trips to the continent from the UK when I wasn't earning nearly enough. It makes things feel like a community and when in Scandinavia, helped me practise my local language skills. It's a shame they are banned in Singapore (and I guess NYC may be following suit if it hasn't done so), where coincidence or not, hotel rates are amongst the highest in the world unless you're Swiss or Norwegian. I stick to an in-house host and just rent a room rather than an entire property but check to ensure I could use the kitchen if I know I would need to. One gripe I have about LCCs I have though: in their understandable quest to lower costs, they take the seamlessness out of connecting flights away. And as we have seen over recent years, they are making legacy carriers bow down to their practices.
One from deep in the archives here.... I've been working on a sequel actually as I think it might do quite well now my channel is bigger.... Still don't love AirBnB but your points are extremely valid - they can be superb if you're on a budget
When you said the ITA is rubbish, I got the impression that that was the piece of rubbish the crew did not literally bother to pick up as they were getting ready to land. More to the point: that moment must have summed up everything that is wrong with the carrier.
At check in I hate the way staff bend your passport back. They have to last ten years and repeatedly doing that weakens the spine. Plus what on earth was she doing with her glasses? Thanks for this video, very interesting and useful
I cringed when I saw her bend that passport of yours….What the hell was she doing? I once had an issue when entering the US because the employee at check in doing exactly that, aka treating what is a very valuable document carelessly, resulting in a corner of the digital information page being unreadable on their system. I also cringe when check in agents have opened drinks at their desk next to your passport. Great flight report xx
Not the greatest flight you've ever had Matt by the sounds of it. Thankfully all of my flights I've had I've never needed the rush to the toilet thing you experienced, sorry to hear about that.
Illuminating review. I flew VA Upper Class in 2002 on a Jumbo and it was style AND substance. Now it seems to be style over substance. Dull food, poor seat storage. BA Club Suite is far more attractive. The loft seems to be a waste of space.
Another great video Matt. Looks like you're going to need to do another virgin video about the new dynamic points pricing. It's looking like bad news as far as I can tell. One of the best parts of Virgin was flat rate points booking. Read something which said "Based on what we saw when Delta (which owns 49% of Virgin Atlantic, remember) moved to dynamic award pricing, redemptions could get toppy indeed and extend into the hundreds of thousands of points for some flights. Delta’s standard reward price for return transatlantic flights is 750,000 SkyMiles in business class." Looks like I'm going to have to find someone to status match with!
Indeed - it wouldn't be a Matt's Planet video if something wasn't announced days later that invalidates some of what I say.... Its perplexing its all happening within a month, that they only gave Head For Points 2 hours notice, and can't answer (or choose not to answer) very basic questions about what's going to happen....
@@MattsPlanet it can only mean the devaluation is going to be mammoth. I reckon they're releasing details in increments because if they gave all the details upfront, people like headforpoints and yourself would crunch the numbers, show the horrendous points devaluation and then people would stop using them right away because points accrual would just be a waste.
Yes it doesn’t look a good picture on what’s going to happen to our points. Specially it seems for premium cabin redemptions. Doesn’t even seem to be much carrot with it either by reducing the crazy surcharges they want for redemptions
After missing the Upper Class drive up ramp, I would have gone back there on foot and filmed myself doing an air steering wheel with brum-brum sound effects. I have a particular gripe with Virgin and indeed also with many a reviewer for underplaying it. That's the reduction in width in PE of a measured 2.5 inches. They botched the whole cabin design of the A350 starting at the front and were tempted to use the width of the A350 cabin to squeeze in an extra seat in each row. Its now at the low end of PE seat width, nice though it may be other terms. Its the same seat on the A330-900neo. On the A330-900neo there is the least point in paying for PE, as economy is good as it goes in the fleet while PE its the fundamentally inferior new type. The greatest point in booking PE is on the 787, as it has the meanest of economy experiences whereas the PE seats are still of the old school wide variety. Actually I can see the value of it over going Upper Class on a westward US flight if you like window seats and the views.
Cheers FC. Can I call you Fatty??? Catty??? Anyhoo - interesting comments. I reviewed Virgin's PE cabin (on a 787 actually) and found it a bit weird but with a sample of 1 its hard to match the detailed knowledge you have. And you're right - westbound then PE or even economy is fine, especially if you can get an exit row window....
@@MattsPlanet Its equally true that I am very fat and also that I am a cat, but I think 'Fatty' has the better ring to it if you want to shorten my name. I actually have a fantasy notion of having an airline that has no business or first, but instead does economy and PE very well. I have no idea if it would be viable. I'd run PE has a sort of super-PE, being somewhat like Virgin's very old business class used to be but less large. No lie flats but really good padding, food and amenities. I do think for most transatlantic travel lie flat is BS and in terms of many biz seats with tiny foot cubbys and narrow widths its often a poor solution for sleeping anyway. I'd have economy as 18-19 inch wide and keeping existing econ seat arm rests, 32 and 35 inch pitch sold separately. PE pitch as 42 but don't allow ridiculous recline. Width 22 or 23. Everyone gets good food and especially in PE. Bigger toilets, regularly kept free of piss pools and skid marks, luxury provisions within including toilet paper with aloe vera for your botty. A few seats removed to provide machines for movement e.g. stepper. I'd call economy Bestest Economy and the expensive seats would be Comfort Class. Babies would have to go in a pod. I'd make the funniest safety videos ever with violent cartoon depiction of the consequences of crashes, accidents and misbehavior. Drink would be free flowing in Comfort but order would be kept using truncheons. I might even have a standing up bar and also an onboard massage parlour with happy endings ( with Comfort Class priority ). I'd call it .......... NotShit Air
Peter! I make a mistake in every video. Then when someone points it out in the comments, I pretend it was deliberate!!! So congratulations for spotting.... You'd never guess I was an accountant for 25 years would you???
