skywalkerLAX
Member
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2007
- Posts
- 201
Finally finding some time for this TR... The trip was a little different than I expected with mixed feelings along the way.
This was the first time I flew Virgin Atlantic Upper Class. I had some miles left on United Mileage Plus and I discovered Continental pops out award options on VS when I used the search engine so I quickly transferred the miles over to onePass and did the booking online. Easy and uncomplicated, no talking to the CSR, no coughing about my international CC as usual with the US carriers. Always loved CO for it's simplicity 75k for a VS Upper Class Ticket Sydney-Hong Kong-London-Frankfurt, connection on Lufthansa. Only 81$ Taxes, yes I can live with that after being ripped off multiple times by the high YQ that bmi charges. Note: Others report it's difficult to find VS availability and this was booked about 4 days prior to departure. :idea:
My expectations and excitement were high, arriving at the airport and entering the hall I discovered that no Upper Class Check-In desk was manned. No big deal... I used the regular line as it was pretty short. I should have maybe picked a different counter as the agent was anything but friendly, later I discovered it didn't matter as her colleague next door wasn't much more motivated than herself. Boarding passes were issued, they only have the regular red boarding passes and actually they look very old. Nothing different for UC passengers. In HKG at the Lounge they keep reprints for every through pax and exchange it on the spot. Comment to that: "Yes we know SYD only has these terrible bp so we reprint them for all our Transit Passengers". If VS knows this then why not shipping fresh stock to SYD?? Just a thought...
They were unable to print my boarding pass for LHR-FRA, ok that's relatively common. Then they were also unable to print me an electronic baggage tag all the way to FRA which I found rather odd. It seems like VS Software is not up to date when it comes to interlining, even if on the same ticket. I intervened as I had terrible experiences with manual tags but even the supervisor couldn't get it to work and came off rather ignorant and disgruntled how I could bother her with this. The first tag they wrote was completely illegible - even I (knowing my destination) could NOT read it and I started to get a little bothered by the staffs attitude. I demanded a new tag with legible letters and a correctly passenger copy of it. Thankfully I did that as of course when I reached FRA the bag was not there and stuck in LHR. :evil: I decided to pay it back to the people at check-In and decided to buy extra insurance for my checked baggage. A task that you will find is no fun for agents who are already unable to do proper check-in procedures. It took them roughly 30 minutes to figure out the proceedings while I finished up some last minute mail. I think it wasn't the real price of 60$ because I paid much less before, however their task was done and I declined politely. By now they were pretty friendly and the duty station manager joined them. I think they got the drill after some nice comments I gave them on the way.
Next: Off to the lounge and boarding to HKG !
This was the first time I flew Virgin Atlantic Upper Class. I had some miles left on United Mileage Plus and I discovered Continental pops out award options on VS when I used the search engine so I quickly transferred the miles over to onePass and did the booking online. Easy and uncomplicated, no talking to the CSR, no coughing about my international CC as usual with the US carriers. Always loved CO for it's simplicity 75k for a VS Upper Class Ticket Sydney-Hong Kong-London-Frankfurt, connection on Lufthansa. Only 81$ Taxes, yes I can live with that after being ripped off multiple times by the high YQ that bmi charges. Note: Others report it's difficult to find VS availability and this was booked about 4 days prior to departure. :idea:
My expectations and excitement were high, arriving at the airport and entering the hall I discovered that no Upper Class Check-In desk was manned. No big deal... I used the regular line as it was pretty short. I should have maybe picked a different counter as the agent was anything but friendly, later I discovered it didn't matter as her colleague next door wasn't much more motivated than herself. Boarding passes were issued, they only have the regular red boarding passes and actually they look very old. Nothing different for UC passengers. In HKG at the Lounge they keep reprints for every through pax and exchange it on the spot. Comment to that: "Yes we know SYD only has these terrible bp so we reprint them for all our Transit Passengers". If VS knows this then why not shipping fresh stock to SYD?? Just a thought...
They were unable to print my boarding pass for LHR-FRA, ok that's relatively common. Then they were also unable to print me an electronic baggage tag all the way to FRA which I found rather odd. It seems like VS Software is not up to date when it comes to interlining, even if on the same ticket. I intervened as I had terrible experiences with manual tags but even the supervisor couldn't get it to work and came off rather ignorant and disgruntled how I could bother her with this. The first tag they wrote was completely illegible - even I (knowing my destination) could NOT read it and I started to get a little bothered by the staffs attitude. I demanded a new tag with legible letters and a correctly passenger copy of it. Thankfully I did that as of course when I reached FRA the bag was not there and stuck in LHR. :evil: I decided to pay it back to the people at check-In and decided to buy extra insurance for my checked baggage. A task that you will find is no fun for agents who are already unable to do proper check-in procedures. It took them roughly 30 minutes to figure out the proceedings while I finished up some last minute mail. I think it wasn't the real price of 60$ because I paid much less before, however their task was done and I declined politely. By now they were pretty friendly and the duty station manager joined them. I think they got the drill after some nice comments I gave them on the way.
Next: Off to the lounge and boarding to HKG !