Posted by Seth on January 18, 2012 under frequent flyer, News, points | 
The frequent flyer partnership between United Airlines‘ Continental subsidiary and Virgin Atlantic is being terminated as of February 13, 2012. This date is the last for mileage earning or redemption ticket issuance on the partner, with award redemptions valid for one year from that date, assuming they are issued. This isn’t a particularly surprising move, though it is a bit of a downgrade in terms of the MileagePlus program.
The Continental/Virgin relationship made a lot of sense when it was originally launched. Continental had a minimal amount of traffic into London at all and none into Heathrow due to the Bermuda II restrictions. It allowed Continental to market flights into Heathrow under their own code and to sell onward connections using Heathrow as a transit point. Since the establishment of the Open Skies agreement between the US and the EU, however, Continental has had access to Heathrow and has steadily increased flights there. Add in the merger with United and there are only a few cities now where Virgin had nonstop service ex-LHR that the combined United doesn’t and those are less significant today.
The end of the partnership is rather unfortunate on the redemption side of the frequent flyer program in particular as Virgin has often had decent award availability, especially in their Upper Class business class product and especially close to the travel date. I’ve taken advantage of that a couple times and, though I’m not a huge fan of the product, it is still an option being lost which is unfortunate.
Also unfortunate is the timing of the announcement. The company provided barely 4 weeks’ notice of the change, one that they have likely known about for some time. It is a shame that the changes to partners and earning rates are trickling out so slowly as part of the merger process.
Posted by Seth on November 3, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points |
Continental and Amtrak have been partners for many years, offering the ability to earn OnePass miles on certain routes in the Northeast Corridor as well as the ability to move points between both programs at a 1:1 rate. There are a number of incredibly attractive awards in the Amtrak Guest Rewards program and the fungibility of points between the two programs was a great benefit for members of both. That relationship is coming to an end at the end of the year.
The move is tied to the expiry of the OnePass program as the new United Airlines moves to their new MileagePlus program. Not too much of a surprise there as the partnership is with a program that will be dying. According to Amtrak, they are trying to keep the relationship alive with the new MileagePlus, but that deal has not yet been finalized so they are warning members now of the impending change according to UnRoadWarrior.
This announcement opens as many new questions as it provides answers.
Currently there is reciprocity between the Amtrak and Continental lounge memberships. But that is ending in February and there is not yet a finalized agreement to continue it. Amtrak’s top tier elites also get the lounge benefit and there have been many issues getting it honored in the newly re-branded United Clubs.
There’s also the relationship between Continental and Virgin Atlantic. Back when they didn’t have access to Heathrow the partnership was great for Continental. Now that they do have access to Heathrow – and flights from 6 US gateways – the value of that relationship is certainly lessened. And United has never had that partnership as they had the Heathrow slots. The two carriers both had arrangements with Emirates but both killed them. There’s also Eva on the Continental side (though they’ve applied to become a Star Alliance member) and Qatar on the United side.
Lots of open questions that still need answers. Perhaps this move with Amtrak is a hint. Or not. Nothing like the joys of speculation with minimal data to support a claim.
Posted by Seth on August 18, 2011 under Review, Trip Reports |
The Thai Airways lounges in Bangkok have been oft regaled. Their first class passengers, particularly, are well spoilt with hour-long massages and excellent dining options. Alas, my trip was only departing in business class so I was relegated to the lesser service. I know that the first class treatment must be nicer but the business class option was pretty darn impressive.
Check-in was handled well, with the added bonus of having seats at the check-in counters rather than having to stand while dealing with bag tags and seat assignments. I would have been happier if they tagged my bags all the way through to my final destination rather than just to Johannesburg, but that ended up not making a difference as I had to claim and drop the bags again anyways after clearing customs. And the private security and immigration facilities just for premium passengers was terrific, not in the least because I was the only one in line as I passed through.
Thai operates a bunch of lounges at Suvarnabhumi Airport covering First and Business Class passengers as well as Star Alliance Gold elite members. But they reserve access to the largest lounge for only premium cabin passengers. The services were, in my experience, nearly identical at the main lounge as in the others. Most notable was the presence of a duty free shop inside the biz lounge. And the dedicated lounge was much larger. None of the lounges were particularly crowded while I was there, but I attribute that mostly to my off-peak departure time (6pm) more than anything else. I can imagine that the *G lounges would get quite crowded at peak departure times.
All of the lounges offered up plenty of beverage options as well as various snack foods, ranging from soup to steamed buns to shumai to noodles. I’m drooling again just remembering them.
All the talk I’d previously heard about the first class departures spa and massages neglected to mention that business class passengers also get a complimentary treatment. No, it isn’t an hour long nor a full body work over, but you do get a choice of four half hour treatments. I didn’t realize this until I’d already spent an hour – and most of my preflight lounge time – sitting in the dedicated business class passenger lounge. Whoopsie. Fortunately there was just enough time for me to get my shoulder and neck massage prior to the flight. But shame on me for not doing the research I should have.
Following my massage it was time to meander out to the gate area – about 15 minutes away – and prepare for the flight itself. Thanks to the quality of the pre-flight pampering I was afforded in the lounge and the spa I wasn’t too worried about the in-flight experience.
I’ve been in the Lufthansa First Class Terminal and their dedicated First Class Lounges. I’ve been in the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class lounge. And I’ve been in any number of lounges operated by other carriers for elites and business class passengers. Putting aside the cool factor of the drive from the FCT to the airplane, I’m not sure that much out there beats the quality of the pre-flight pampering that Thai offers is pretty impressive. In the heat of the moment, relaxing following my massage with a glass of tea, I was convinced that it was the best ever. I’ve backed down from that a bit, mostly because the dining options that Lufthansa offers for the FCL/FCT are better by far than the business options that Thai has.
But I could quite reasonably argue that the Thai product is the best Business Class option I’ve experienced. Up against Virgin’s flagship Clubhouse in London‘s Heathrow I’d say that Thai does a quite respectable job. Less crowded, easier access to the spa treatments and better tasting food, if not quite the same variety. No waitress service but the open self-service bar didn’t suck.
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Tags: Bangkok, elite status, London, Lounge, Lufthansa, Photos, RTW2011, Star Alliance, Thai Air, Trip Report, Virgin Atlantic
Posted by Seth on March 22, 2011 under frequent flyer, News |
JetBlue continues to add international interline partners, expanding the number of destinations accessible on a single ticket. Today’s addition of Virgin Atlantic brings connectivity between four airports in the United Kingdom and four JetBlue hub airports in the United States, with onward connections available.
The Virgin Atlantic routes that are being linked are:
- Boston – London (Heathrow)
- New York (Kennedy) – London (Heathrow)
- Orlando – Glasgow
- Orlando – London (Gatwick)
- Orlando – Manchester
- Washington (Dulles) – London (Heathrow)
This is an interline agreement only; there is no frequent flyer program reciprocity yet. Still, always good to see more options appearing for such connections. Flights are only bookable through Virgin Atlantic or travel agents right now but that will likely change in the near future given that JetBlue has recently started offering interline booking directly on its own website for some partners.
One interesting competition note here is that interline connecting flights between Kennedy and Heathrow are now available on both Virgin Atlantic and American Airlines. The flights on American can earn TrueBlue points while the Virgin Atlantic flights cannot. It will be interesting to see if that skews the passenger traffic one direction or the other.
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Posted by Seth on January 3, 2011 under Trip Reports |
It is now the new year, with new goals and new milestones on the horizon. But not too late to take a quick look back at 2010 and the travel milestones I hit during the year. Not surprisingly, the more I travel the harder it is to reach new and different accomplishments. Indeed, 2010 had many fewer than 2009, though in a couple categories it surpassed the previous year.
Perhaps the most significant numbers of the year are the total amount of time in the air:
- 151 segments
- 208378 miles
- 18 days 13:31
Those numbers are “butt-in-seat” and based on the distances between the starting and ending airport as calculated on www.openflights.org. They do not include 500 mile minimums or the like. In most cases the durations are based on wheels up to wheels down as tracked by the appropriate authorities, not the block time of the flight or estimates. The 208K miles is the most ever for me in a calendar year as is the 151 segments.
Of the 151 segments flown, more than half (86, to be precise) were routes I had not flown previously. It is certainly becoming more and more difficult to find new ways to get to different places but I continue to try. New lines and new dots are still of value to me and I’m finding that I’m paying a bit more to get them.
I also passed through 77 airports during the year located in 18 different countries. I actually Immigrated 31 different times, including the various times I returned to the United States. On four of my trips there were multiple foreign countries involved.
I visited 15 distinct countries, plus the USA. Eight of those countries (St. Maarten, Sint Martin, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Togo, Guyana, Morocco and Tunisia) were new to me. Two of the crossings (into Togo and back into Ghana were on foot while the Sint Martin/St. Maarten crossing were by car; The others were all by plane. I also added a new state visited – Idaho – to my list even though I drove over from Spokane to get there rather than flying in.
My travels included flying on 24 different airlines (possibly a few more if regional/express carriers are included by I’m not great at tracking those). Of those 24, 13 were airlines I had not previously flown on (AC, AT, BA, BD, BE, HA, LC, RW, SN, TGY, VS, YV & YX). Again, it is getting much harder to find new ones at reasonable prices but I’m doing my best, including a couple booked for the early part of 2011.
None of my milestones north, south, east or west were new extremes for me this year. Nor was my longest flight (SYD-SFO) longer than previous records. I did get a new shortest flight for my list, one that will almost certainly never be broken.
Somewhat amazingly, of the 151 flights I only had three instances where I was struck by operations so irregular that they caused a missed flight. One of them – during my JetBlue AYCJ adventures wasn’t a big deal and I got back on track without really missing anything along the way. Two others – a US Airways delay out of Belgium and a Royal Air Maroc fiasco in Casablanca – caused me to overnight unexpectedly. The US Air incident wasn’t so bad but the Air Maroc one was pretty awful.
Finally, I managed to pick up five new aircraft types during the year. My favorite was probably the smallest, the Cessna 208 Caravan I, though the
| Saab SF340 was fun, too, and the Embraer 175LR was the best ride of them all.
And I got robbed once where the guy took money directly from my hands and probably a couple more times due to bad negotiating skills in markets. At least I robbed the guy who physically took the cash out of my hand back. |
And while I sit on the airplane now, enjoying a flight from Lufthansa into Frankfurt and on to Munich, I realize that I may only be three days into the new year but I’ve already got a new line for my map and tomorrow will bring another one, along with a rubber duckie souvenir. Not a bad way to start the year.
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Tags: Air Canada, bmi, British Airways, Brussels, Dominican Republic, Embraer, FlyBE, Flying, Ghana, Guyana, LoganAir, Lufthansa, Morocco, Togo, Tunisia, Virgin Atlantic
Posted by Seth on August 10, 2010 under frequent flyer, News, points |
Alas, the coupling isn’t nearly as sexy as it could have been.
Virgin America and Virgin Atlantic are slowly moving forward in their relationship, with the British half announcing today that customers flying on the American carrier’s flights will be able to credit their travel to the Flying Club frequent flyer program rather than Elevate if desired. This is a nice improvement, especially given the breadth of other partners that Flying Club has for good earning potential. Still, it is limited in several ways to the point of being less than great news.
For starters, flying on the less expensive fares will only earn half credit; only the most expensive fare classes like refundable Main Cabin fares or Main Cabin Select will earn full credit. That’s unfortunate but somewhat understandable, especially considering the similar limitations that Virgin Atlantic applies to their own flights and to other partners. Additionally, the partnership is only for earning: no redemption on Virgin America yet. Plus, it is only in one direction: no earning in Elevate for Virgin Atlantic flights. Turns out that you can earn in Elevate for flying on Virgin Atlantic, too. The rates are miserable – as low as 10% on some fares and maxing out at only 60% – but at least the option is there.
Still, for someone who doesn’t mind the fuel surcharges that Flying Club charges on redemptions and who has lots of Hertz rentals and Hilton stays, the ability to rack up points in Flying Club isn’t all that horrible. And being able to add the occasional Virgin America flight to that pool rather than abandoning it in Elevate is a nice option.
Growing partnerships are always nice to see, even if they are not perfect. This development certainly falls in to that category.
Posted by Seth on July 23, 2010 under News |
The rumors surrounding the cabin configuration for Virgin Atlantic’s new Airbus A330 deliveries have been swirling for some time now. Today the company has confirmed that they will take delivery of “the first batch” of the planes with only Premium Economy and Economy cabins. There will be no Upper Class on these planes.
The comment about later A330s including Upper Class is somewhat promising but it is not clear if the aircraft delivered without will be retrofit or if the carrier will be operating some aircraft without their premium cabin. Rumor has it that the Upper Class cabin will not be available because the carrier cannot get the seats they want in time for the initial deliveries. That would suggest that the aircraft will eventually be refit. Then again, the company has reduced the Upper Class capacity on a number of their Boeing 747-400 aircraft suggesting that they are seeing a decline in demand for the product in some markets. Either way, the introduction of aircraft without the premium cabin is not good for folks looking to enjoy the Virgin Upper Class experience.
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Posted by Seth on July 7, 2010 under Flying, Trip Reports |
The last of the ten flights on our vacation in Scotland was the late night Virgin Atlantic service from London’s Heathrow to Newark. This wasn’t our original plan – we had intended to come home on the Continental non-stop from Glasgow – but a couple last minute changes happened and the reward inventory was there so a quick call to Continental had our tickets changed and the new itinerary booked. We’ve done the same Virgin Atlantic flight before (on the same aircraft, it turns out) and it is pleasant enough but I’m struggling to figure out why some folks are so completely in love with it.
Don’t get me wrong. It is a decent business class product, perhaps even a very strong one, but this is my second experience and, well, it is really not THAT special. Okay, I’m typing this sitting at the bar on the plane after standing at the same said bar for well over two hours and chatting up a few other passengers and drinking my fair share of Grey Goose. Plus I was able to spend a couple hours in the Clubhouse in London. Truly it isn’t a bad experience. But there are a lot of little things that add up in the overall experience that detract from it.
As a well traveled friend of mine said to me that afternoon, “LHR Clubhouse is IMPRESSIVE yet somehow not SPECIAL” I couldn’t agree more. It is certainly a great place to spend a few hours on the way back to the United States and it is a great lounge, but I’m still not convinced that I should schedule travel based on transiting LHR and the Clubhouse.
Read more of this article »
Posted by Seth on July 5, 2010 under frequent flyer, points, Trip Reports |
So I’m somewhere vaguely south of Greenland right now. I’m sitting at the Upper Class bar of a Virgin Atlantic Airbus A340-300 on the late night flight from London to Newark. This isn’t the flight I originally booked and certainly not the flight I expected to be on tonight but, well, life is funny sometimes.
Still, I’ve taken ten flights in the past eleven days and this one is just fine. The good news is that I can still name all ten of the flights. The itinerary was EWR-LHR//LHR-ABZ-LSI//LSI-KOI-WRY-PPW//WRY-KOI//KOI-EDI//EDI-LHR-EWR.That last bit was supposed to be GLA-EWR but, well, life got in the way so there was a change of plans. It meant an extra flight and it also meant a visit to the Clubhouse and a flight on an extra new airline for me – bmi. Yes, I have over 300,000 points accrued in the bmi Diamond Club frequent flyer program but until today I had never flown with them. And I’m not alone in that aspect of my usage of the program.
In addition to bmi, I also go my first flights on FlyBE, British Airways and LoganAir during the trip. Six new airports, four new airlines and one trip on the world’s shortest commercial flight. Plus some awesome experiences in Scotland. Not bad at all.
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Posted by Seth on December 30, 2009 under Trip Reports |
I should be in the air over the Atlantic Ocean right now, curled up in a First Class suite on Turkish Air. Instead I’m on an Airbus A321 over the Mediterranean on a non-stop flight to Barcelona. Indeed, the trip has taken a much more direct routing and quite substantial turn. In the end, I still get to celebrate New Years in Barcelona with the splendiferous missus and we even get to sleep in a real bed tonight rather than in coach on a Delta 767-300ER. Still, the scene today in Istanbul’s airport can only be described as frustrating and trying, with a bit of misery thrown in as well as a reasonably successful tactical retreat.
Last night, while waiting in Luxor for the departure of the flight to Cairo, I learned that the Istanbul-JFK flight for that day had been delayed pretty badly. Over three hours, in fact. That plane was turning around to come back to Istanbul and then would be used for the flight that we were scheduled to be on. Except at the time I didn’t know that it would be that plane, and there was no one in Luxor I could ask. There wasn’t really anyone to ask in Cairo, either. So I went into the flight to Istanbul hopeful and optimistic, as well as truly exhausted.
As first class passengers we were greeted at the end of the jetway with a sign and a golf cart to whisk us away to the security checkpoint and then the lounge. It took them a while to round up the necessary supplies for us to shower but we managed to get that done and settled in for breakfast. Everything seemed OK.
Failure
And then the bottom fell out. The lounge agent came over to me and handed me the house phone. An agent on the other end of the line was explaining that the flight would be rather delayed and that she had arranged for a day room at the hotel in the terminal for us. Ruh roh. Just how delayed would the flight be? At least 3 hours (it turned into 5 by the time we left the airport). That completely ruined our 3 hour connection in JFK. Time to scramble.
There was a flight to Frankfurt leaving in 40 minutes that would get us to the early Frankfurt-JFK flight by the woman could not (or would not) make the change for us. While I tried desperately to negotiate through the language barrier and explain my predicament the minutes ticked away and the flight was closed. That was our last chance to make it to JFK in time for the Delta outbound flight. Game over.
It is also worth mentioning that at this point my laptop decided it didn’t want to power on and my BlackBerry went into a reboot cycle every 5-10 minutes. Ouch.
Recovery, Part 1
The Delta tickets we had were bottom of the barrel priced sale seats. The change fees for them were more than the actual tickets cost. That money was now gone. Poof. Still, I had a mind to celebrate New Years in Barcelona more than I cared about getting the Istanbul – New York flight in Turkish Air first class (a five day vacation is always worth more than an eleven hour flight) so it was time to start making things happen. The lounge had no phones available for customers and there was no means for me to reasonably call the United States to get in touch with Continental, the carrier that issued our tickets. Things were getting worse, not better.
There was a flight leaving for Barcelona in 45 minutes and the agent was willing to put us on that flight, right up until she realized it was a reward ticket. Then she was quite willing to sell us a walk-up full fare ticket and let us deal with our “travel agency” to handle the flights that were missed. Not gonna work. Still, I managed to revive my laptop and get the Skype client working and continental.com’s reward search inventory up on screen. Even more amazing, I actually found two seats available from Barcelona to New York in business class on the date we were scheduled to go home. A glimmer of hope.
Karla answered the phone for Continental and was incredibly patient with me as I explained my needs and desires over a rather questionable voice quality connection. I was able to feed her the flight numbers and she saw the inventory available. She just wasn’t sure if she could change the flight as I had already started the return trip. She had to call a supervisor and in the mean time the 45 minutes to the Barcelona departure were ticking away with great speed. Karla made the necessary changes, inserting an open jaw into the ticket and leaving the Istanbul – Barcelona segment open for us to fill. She was still working on confirming it but we had to go immediately to catch our flight. I gave her my credit card number without knowing the charges and hung up to hop on the plane to Barcelona that was now 30 minutes away from departure.
No can do. The agent was reasonably polite about the situation but it was quite clear. We weren’t getting on that plane. Rebooking the Continental tickets took a bit too long and that flight was closed for sales, even with 30 minutes remaining. I had made the changes that she agreed to and now I was still stuck in Istanbul.
Recovery, Part 2
At this point we had some time to play with. Continental was already reissuing the return ticket so we just had to find a way to get to Barcelona at a reasonable price. There were a number of options, including overnight connections in Amsterdam, Riga and Athens. All were slightly cheaper than the non-stop afternoon flight to Barcelona. In the end, however, we settled on the non-stop flight. Better to go for a relatively sure thing. Besides, we don’t have winter coats with us so Amsterdam or Latvia would be pretty unpleasant tonight.
We booked the flight through Travelocity because is was half the price that the agent wanted in the lounge. Such transactions are normally completed pretty quickly but after 20 minutes we still only had a reservation, not a ticket. Time to make another call. The Travelocity agent initially just wanted me to wait it out. Only when I explained that the flight was 4 hours away did it get properly escalated. Apparently they were worried about fraud for a last minute, one-way ticket purchased from Istanbul to Barcelona. I can’t say that I really blame them. Another 10 minutes on the phone assuring them that I really was me and that I really was buying walk-up tickets and the ticket was finally issued.
The agent had also previously offered us that hotel room for our wait. I now called that one in, asking that we be able to still use it. She agreed and we soon were laying down for a couple hours’ nap time that was much, much needed. Everything seemed OK at this point. We had our flights to Barcelona and the onward flights from Barcelona to NYC, albeit on a somewhat circuitous routing. And we had a bed for the first time in 30 hours. Not all bad. Except one little thing.
Recovery, Part 3
For some reason, Continental couldn’t actually make the change to our reward ticket. The agents I spoke with (and there were several of them) all insisted that we were still checked in for the Turkish Air flight from Istanbul to JFK. As long as we were on that flight they couldn’t remove it from the itinerary and substitute in the three segments to get us home from Barcelona. Time and time again I approached the agents at the counter and asked them to confirm that we were not checked in anymore on that flight. Each time they said we weren’t but the folks at Continental said we were. My worst nightmare at this point was getting to Barcelona and having Turkish reporting us as a no-show for the flight, canceling out the remaining value of our tickets. The price for Istanbul-Barcelona was bad enough. Shelling out for Barcelona-NYC on top of that probably would have driven me over the edge.
I finally had our Turkish Air “handler” from the morning back at the counter so I called Continental one more time with the plan of having the two of them talk it out so I didn’t have to stay in the middle. By coincidence I managed to get Karla on the phone again.
“Karla with a ‘K’?” I inquired. Yes, she said, somewhat befuddled. “I talked to you earlier with the crazy re-route from Barcelona to New York via Brussels and London; remember me?”
I’d like to think that she has fond memories of me now, if for no other reason than I’m pretty sure I was the most entertaining customer she had today. In reality, I’m just really happy that I didn’t have to explain my story one more time. The minutes were now starting to tick away on the afternoon departure to Barcelona and I had already paid for those tickets and I wasn’t about to lose them, too. Fortunately Karla proactively got another supervisor on the phone while I was talking to the agent at the desk. The supervisor apparently has some magic “refresh” button (Karla’s words, not mine) that made the reservation sync up again and show that we were no longer checked in for the flight.
Finally.
Karla then was able to issue the new ticket, collect the $40 additional in taxes and confirm the new flights for us.
Success
And there we were, six hours after the bottom initially fell out, with our flights rebooked and a new itinerary ready to go. Sure, it cost us some cash and the price actually went up as the rebooking process continued. Still, the overall goal was met. We’re going to celebrate New Years among friends in Barcelona and we’re going to experience some fun times on premium cabin flights along the way. The new return flight gives us about four hours at the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse in Heathrow along with our Upper Class seats across the pond. I’m sure that we’ll be exhausted on Tuesday when we get back to work but overall the adventure remains mostly alive, even if it means no Turkish Air first class. Based on their ground handling I’m not entirely sure it would be worth it.
Lessons learned from this experience:
- Betting on Turkish Air arriving within 3 hours of on-time for the NYC route is a rather large gamble. I lost.
- Creativity and flexibility can find all sorts of reward seats if desperation sets in.
- Sometimes the adventure costs a bit more than expected, but the stories are generally worth it, especially when the rest of the travels are happening on the very cheap side of the ledger.
- A good agent at the airline can really make things happen. Karla did it for me today and others have in the past. They make this whole game run just a bit more smoothly.
Posted by Seth on December 4, 2009 under News |
Yup, Virgin Atlantic seems to be keen on bringing about the apocalypse. They’re actually going to be removing a number of Upper Class seats from their 747-400 configuration and replacing them with coach seats. Even stranger, they’re doing so in the “exclusive” upper deck zone of the 747s. And so there it is – mixing the passengers in the same cabin area on an airplane with no real separation between the two. Even intra-Europe narrow-body planes usually have a curtain or something.
The forward part of the upper deck will still be designated as the snooze zone, reserved for folks who want a quieter ride so they can sleep on the flight rather than eat, drink or chat. But instead of another 10 passengers behind them upstairs there will now be 33 passengers. Sure, there is the small exit row space separating the groups but the only lavatory is in the front (Virgin says they’ll fix that but there doesn’t seem to be room) and tripling the number of passengers is always going to increase the noise level.
But they need to make money and if they aren’t getting it in the old config (left) then they don’t really have too much choice. I guess they could try dropping them down to Premium Economy seats instead. After all, that is supposedly the fasted growing segment of long-haul travel. But they’d probably only get about 16 PE seats in where they are getting 33 coach seats so the incremental gain wouldn’t pan out financially. On the main deck there isn’t much room to work with because of the way the cabin is laid out with the bar and the Premium Economy cabin. Maybe replacing the 14 seats in the nose with coach seats would have worked but that’s more seats lost and you still have the coach passengers mixing with the business class folks.
It turns out that Virgin Atlantic isn’t alone in this type of configuration. Air New Zealand has a similar arrangement on their 747s, though with Premium Economy upstairs, not regular economy. But those two seem to be the only ones.
I know that it doesn’t really matter: people are people and there are plenty of arrogant asshats in the business class seats just like in the coach section. But part of the appeal of buying up to the premium cabin – and especially the upper deck – is the exclusivity of it. And that is going away. Bummer.
