by Chrissy Iley
I arrive in a crowded at the Virgin terminal at LAX, lines out of the building. Passengers anxious, irritated, and eventually yelling and abusive.
There are about 300 people in line and only three ticket agents. I’m lucky; I join the very long line for Upper Class as opposed to the eternal line for Premium and the line that is line as long as the X Factor hopefuls at the O2 for Economy.
People buy Upper Class because they don’t want to be in line. People buy Premium because they want to be in a short line. People in Economy accept there might be some waiting, but not this much.
Once on the plane the way Virgin likes to cut corners makes me sad. They’ve changed the material of the sleep suits and the socks so they instantly give me a rash.
My lasagne consisted of a thick curl of pasta with what looked like Boursin cheese in the middle of it. I doubt it cost 17p.
The staff were sweet and smiled on regardless. One of them made me a cappuccino, which was the highlight of my trip. For breakfast I requested toast but they’d run out of butter.
It’s a long time since Virgin did mini-tubes of moisturiser and lip balm. I once complained about that and I was told that they’d done a survey and no one used it. Why then in my last two trips on Upper Class has the rather nice Cowshed moisturiser been stolen from the bathroom. I asked one of the flight attendants who shrugged and said, ‘Makes a nice stocking filler.’
Perhaps if Virgin had laid on more than three staff to deal with an entire plane load of people, people might not have felt treated so badly and so miserable that they had to steal moisturiser. If they weren’t so keen on cutting pennies and fixed a simple moisturiser holder in the bathroom they would save a moisturiser mountain.