Virgin Atlantic Upper Class | Still the business?

I’m fond of Virgin. I fly with everyone, but since Richard Branson decided to stick one up to BA way back when, there’s always been a cheekiness to the airline, a sense of the underdog taking on the big boys. Virgin always tries to be one step ahead and their Upper Class is that. (The latest refurb is reviewed here). BA may have more flights out of Heathrow but they don’t have Virgin’s sparkle, swagger, or a bearded bloke in a sweater appearing in James Bond movies.

To be honest I’m probably not any airline’s ideal passenger. I have a tendency to screech to a halt outside airports, sprint through terminals, blag my way past queues and – a greatly exaggerated rumour in my view – I very occasionally miss the odd flight. But that’s not the point of Upper Class. Since BA introduced beds on transatlantic flights the whole rationale of flying at the front of the plane has changed. It’s about relaxation, sleep, arriving refreshed. On the ground the Virgin Clubhouse is the lounge you don’t want to leave. If you’re thinking flatpack grey with a bottle of wine then you’re with the wrong airline.

I’m not used to relaxing before flights. Once, at LAX, with no time to return a rental car, I stuck some rubber to the tarmac outside American Airline’s international terminal and smiled (always smile) at the man at the kerbside check-in, shouting “London! Hurry!” as I yanked a case out the trunk, threw him the keys and turned to run. “No problem,” he drawled. “You got 20 minutes… and 24 hours. Otherwise you wouldn’t be goin’ nowhere.” Two weeks heat in the Coachella Valley had played havoc with time and I was a full day early.

I am the Extra Minutes Expert. The Very Last Person to Board. Always. I’ve had more flights held for me than I care to think of

I am the Extra Minutes Expert. The Very Last Person to Board. Always. I’ve had more flights held for me than I care to think of. I’ve even held them myself for colleagues who’ve been later than me. (How? It’s simple: you stand in the doorway and make yourself very unpopular.)

So while I don’t actually need a limo to Heathrow – I have an Oyster Card, thank you – Virgin’s Upper Class chauffeur pickup time makes it impossible for me to be late. If there’s bad traffic, they even provide taxi-bikes. The ride along the M4 may be smooth, but it turns to bump and grind as you approach the permanent construction site that is London’s number one airport. No matter, because a secret barrier reveals a private entrance to Terminal Three, a sweeping Bel Air driveway that appears to lead us to Tracy Island, where Thunderbirds have defeated the ugly face of Heathrow horror: the wonky trolleys and deafening noise, the endless corridors of leaky roofs blocked by lumbering families with luggage for a month, the whole countryloads of people carrying checked nylon laundry sacks jam packed with stuff.

All gone. Just a beguiling hostess dressed in vermillion. And me.

Virgin Atlantic Upper Class arrived in the skies with a bang. Branson looked at BA’s First class service and thought: “BORING!!” To rival the competition’s Club class, he even introduced “Premium Economy”, where for a small(ish) excess charge you could have a wider seat and Champagne on boarding. The changes Branson introduced have been copied relentlessly elsewhere, but they meant a lot at the time and made the opposition look dry and dusty.

I check-in and saunter through Virgin’s private security channel to the shopping maze. I hate the shopping maze. I hate it because I’m usually sprinting through it with the grim determination of Tomb Raider, obstructed by offers of small plastic samples of Bailey’s Irish Cream. At 7.30 in the morning. I hate it because there is so much dumb BOGOF signage I can never find the flight information. But Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class Clubhouse is a sidestep from the maze. It is Planet Quiet, and it is as big as the moon. This is Soho House Miami without the ocean vista, Goldfinger’s lair without the missiles. My God, it is Tracy Island.

Upstairs, out on the private deck, I get all misty-eyed. I’ve never forgotten the thrill I got as a small boy, standing on my local airport’s open terrace, viewing planes through my dad’s binoculars. Actually, that’s a lie. I forgot all about it when I went to Singapore’s Changi Airport, with its magnificent open air swimming pool, which beats the hell out of freezing in shorts squinting at wee planes. (Note to Sir Richard: Get pool, possibly heated.)

Inside there’s a library, then another library – or an office, or a cocktail lounge; it’s difficult to tell. Every giant Taschen book ever published is laid out, including GOAT, the monumental tribute to Muhammad Ali, in its own box on its own table, for you to sit and peruse. The bar snakes across the room. There are people having lunchtime martinis, a counter where they slice charcuterie and cured salmon (three different kinds), a shoeshine guy and a Cowshed Spa for pre-flight toning. There’s another bar, laptops everywhere, and a pool table: all wrapped in acres of glass overlooking the planes manoeuvring about the apron (my internal small boy stares, wide eyed). Money may not buy happiness forever, but for an hour or so pre-boarding, this is definitely okay. This kind of hospitality is, however, expensive and may explain – in part – the monumental losses the airline has made over the last year (a reputed £80 million, although the Sunday Times reported £135 million).

We have lunch – the three types of cured salmon and a Clubhouse burger since you ask – which is why we’re here, more so when we return on the red-eye overnight. A pleasant lunch with an equally pleasant selection of wines (Chateau Rouzaud, Lussac St Emilion 2008) before take-off means that you can stretch out on the flat bed for the entire flight.

A tab on my bag instructs me that I have to be at the gate 30 minutes before take-off and, true to form, I’m not. I’ve been checking my emails, Twittering about, reading essential news on Gawker. But I am not legging it down a corridor, scattering children like skittles: I’m walking. It is a marvellous feeling. On board, I check my emails one last time, although that can be done while you fly – at £2 a pop.

Sex sells and the ad campaigns for Virgin have had everything short of strippers

Sex sells and the ad campaigns for Virgin have had everything short of strippers. There’s a lot of advertising jargon about “investing in the quality of their people”, but the present crop of adverts throws wiggling sex at us in abundance: implied, overt, jokey, self-deprecating. So it’s no surprise, as I’m strapping myself in, to be offered another glass of champagne by a stunning blonde, one of several who shimmy past their slim-hipped male counterparts, laughing and giggling. It continues in the air (are they all wearing “Upper Class Red” lippy – the house brand?), and at the bar I’m gleefully told to just help myself to more free fizz.

Ah, The Bar. If anything sets Upper Class apart it’s the party at the bar. Back in the day, performers – comedians and magicians – used to entertain here. They’d be wrestled to the deck now by security marshals, but The Bar is still the world’s most special hangout, if only because you’re six miles up, recreating the glamour of those inaugural flights by seaplane or zeppelin where flappers dressed for cocktails before dinner. Disappointingly, there are only two music biz executives dressed in Super Dry holding forth on my flight, and I’m struggling to keep up with a physicist who has relaxed enough after several drinks to tell amusing anecdotes about eclipse chasing. Then we all talk about South Africa, football, Brian Cox, and the Oscars until a late afternoon nap beckons.

These seats don’t just recline flat, they require one of the trolley dollies to push a button for the full conversion. There’s a bit of wheezing and electronic gimcrackery at this point, as the seat transforms into a full-size single bed, the biggest in the air. Under the duvet, I’m soon out cold, dreaming… (You have to imagine the screen going wobbly here.)

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I’m floating into a brand new, slightly ethereal lounge through what appears to be outer space, a dark corridor lit with twinkling starlight. Everything is in smooth contours in deeply relaxing colours. There are no stressed executives hunched over boring workstations or barking at telephone desks. Instead, angels in red are bringing me potted salmon and steaming bowls of Malaysian prawn laksa.

But this is no dream. I’m waiting for my return flight in the Newark Clubhouse. Following on from the reboot of the JFK Clubhouse, it’s the latest addition to Virgin’s pre-flight drawing rooms. They’ve eschewed gadgetry entirely, on the basis that everyone has their own mobile office/smartphone/tablet nowadays, and what people want is dinner and relaxation. So I have a little of both.

The table beside us is packed with staff from a well known department store’s perfumery department who, despite their inscrutability on the floor, are having a raucous time while remaining perched on their Bertoia Chairs. A couple of Gary Blokes are settled rather incongruously into Pearson Lloyd’s formal yet comfortable Turtle Chairs, and I’m swivelling about in a number by Moroso, the Italian bespoke manufacturer whose fabrics transform the design of furniture with colour. It’s all very Virgin, all very sexy and glam.

At the bar, designed to remind passengers of the Lower Manhattan hangouts they’ve just left, they’re serving Virgin Redheads, the airline’s signature cocktail of bubbly, Bombay Sapphire, liqueurs and fruit. If you’re a member of Soho House you’ll find the whole thing comfortably familiar. If you’re more used to static carpets, desks and coffee machines, you won’t.

On the flight back overnight, not a single person in the Upper Class cabin has dinner. Nobody even watches the movies. It’s sleep, the whole way.

The Delta deal (they’re buying the holding in Virgin Atlantic previously owned by Singapore Airlines for $360 million) is not the only change afoot. The Chief Executive has changed too, and Willie Walsh, former head of BA and Richard Branson’s great sparring partner, has said that the Virgin brand will disappear within five years. The bet is a knee to the groin: he turned down Branson’s initial wager of £1 million.

Branson’s response? Well, what do you think? Business as usual. Onward. Upward, and with that trademark twinkle in his eye, an inherent “F––– ’em” hidden just behind the beard. C

 

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