Still Red Hot? Virgin Atlantic 787 Upper Class Delhi To Heathrow

A Virgin flight is always a fun flight. I’ve had quite a few trips with Virgin last couple of years. I feel it’s time for a new review.

Having upgrade vouchers to use up, I looked at my options and found a decent-ish Premium fare to Delhi that worked with some plans I had for India. It was short 5 day trip. The outbound night flight was also on a 787, where I prioritized sleep. I have a separate trip with Virgin’s brand new 330 NEO seat, which will be coming soon !

After USA, India is Virgin’s next biggest market. So amidst their pioneering spirit in aviation, how does the decade-old product hold up? Service wise,  there’s some mistakes I made with my choices that you ought to avoid !

Flight Particulars

Route: Delhi – London Heathrow
Flight No: VS301 
Date: 19.11.2023
Departure Time: 11:30
Flight Duration: Blocked 9:50 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 787-900
Seats/Suite: 5A

Check-In

Arriving at Delhi Terminal 3 just past 9am local time, my Uber dropped me off just outside Virgin’s check-in zone. The experience was relatively smooth.

Still getting used to “SKY PRIORITY” and Virgin together ! I found 2 dedicated Upper Class counters but it was not so busy in the normal line anyway.

I was not travelling with luggage but for some reason the Virgin app did not let me create the boarding pass online.

Very quick pass pass through nonetheless and if I had not gone through check-in, I might have spend time wondering which lounge I could use after security!

Fast Track Security

While check-in for Virgin was quiet, the rest of the terminal was heaving and this is where “SKY PRIORITY” or just fast track in this instance, came into its own..

I was airline in less than 5 minutes, which I was genuinely surprised with !

Lounge in Delhi

Thankfully Plaza Premium lounge shut out of the blue in Delhi Terminal 3, and so Virgin now has partnership with a brand new lounge, Encalm Prive, where I spent just over an hour in and enjoyed a nice breakfast.

Boarding

I decided to board quite late, by which point almost everyone else in Business had already boarded.

It wasn’t possible to get a good view of our aircraft, with this being the only view I had out..

The upside was no faffing around at the gates, which is always one of my worst pet peeves! Most airlines seem not to have grasped the meaning of  “Priority boarding” when much of the time it translates to rather shambolic delays and twiddling of thumps for “Priority” passengers?!

Therefore once I arrived at the gate, I actually was able to walk right through ahead of few other Economy passengers

Today’s flight would be on Mystery Girl, the aircraft has been flying with Virgin since 2018 with 31 Business Class, 35 Premium and 198 Economy seats.

Virgin Atlantic 787 Upper Class Cabin

I was greeted at the door by a very bubbly crew who pointed me to my seat.

It was a very full Upper Class cabin and thus almost impossible to take a picture of the cabin without others faces being in it..

I chose 5A on the A side of the plane. This is my preferred side as we have an aisle just for ourselves so less likely to be bumping shoulders with others as you get in out of your seats!

Here’s a better view of what this side of the cabin looks like, with all the seats facing into the cabin. It is a very odd and strange product indeed and the primarily reason why I was never a big fan of Virgin Upper class in the earlier days.

Each seat already had all the amenities in place with a large white pillow, complete bedding set behind the seat and then the head phones, amenity kit and the menu..

The entertainment screen and controller are placed on the left side of the seat divider

With a latch control which enables you to swivel out the screen towards you

As you can tell, this looks very dated !

Virgin now is following through with its sustainability push and much like the paper amenity bag, now does away with plastic water bottles but instead you have recyclable water cans!

Compared to most modern Business seats, the seat controls are basic and minimal..

But they have the essentials controls you need!

And here’s a view of the rest of the cabin from my seat. I’ll have some cabin shots from the bar area later..

With me, being one of the last passengers to board, it felt like our aircraft doors were closed and pushed back within mere minutes of me settling in. In fact, we left the gates 6 minutes earlier than scheduled !

Virgin Atlantic 787 Upper Class Delhi To Heathrow Service

There was a welcome drink onboard, for which I just chose some sparkling water. The drinks service was started moments after we reached 10,000 feet.

With this being a complete daytime flight our menu was as follows:

For the  Apéritif, I opted for a Cranberry Sprinz, which I found refreshing, while it was still the morning !

Instead of nuts, Virgin now serve some crisps. Some might prefer the nuts, personally I did not mind either way. Most of the time, I find airlines serve far too much nuts, that more than half go to waste anyway.

Whilst looking through the menu, I was quite intrigued by both the Indian dishes, however, I had a particularly sensitive stomach the day before, as something I ate just didn’t sit right. Either food in India in general has become far more spicier than I remember, or my tolerance to spicy food has gone as I get older. It decided to play it safe, and ordered the non-Indian options.

The crew took the meal preferences whilst doing the drinks.

The lunch service began roughly an hour after take-off. My starter was roast chicken salad..

And this would be as boring as it looked.  For me, it is very hard to get excited about plain roast chicken without all the other naughty things to do with it. To be fair to Virgin, the feta crumble and peach did help what would’ve otherwise been a super dull starter !

About 25 minutes later, my main arrived, the Sea Bass with bok choy & broccoli served with polenta

I kind of immediately started regretting my choice..

It just looked and felt like more of the same.

At this time, I could the crew serve the Indian dishes which looked and smelled far more appetising !

I do love a good sea bass on the ground, but it is clearly far too mild to tickle the taste buds up in air. The fish was a little on the dry side, but nothing the lemon basil sauce could not fix. I enjoy the polenta.

Timing wise it was a little early to be enjoying a substantial lunch, anyhow as it would still be midday in India, when I was regularly having lunch at 3pm there. If I was remotely hungry after that, I would have belatedly ordered one of the Indian dishes, which I’ve done in many flights before.

For the dessert, I decided to go for an Indian option this time!

I ordered the Carrot Halwa with Rabri

This was better, but I would not have given it more than a 7/10 still.

Virgin Atlantic 787 Upper Class Bar

One of the best features of flying on this Virgin aircraft is the wonderful bar area, which Virgin has decided to do away with on new A350s and A330Neos.

It genuinely is a place where I’ve socialised with fellow passengers and even the crew, and on this occasion it was no different.

You will find a little snack tray here alongside some fresh fruits and chilled Champagne and wine…

I didn’t particularly want to drink on this flight but they certainly had more than enough to offer in terms of mocktails, non-alcoholic beer down to a nice selection of Kombuchas !

I spend over an hour after lunch here just enjoying some chilled drinks whilst also keeping an eye on the flight map on the screen here.

You can still have a good view of the rest of the cabin from the bar, as you can see here..

Snack Galley

Between Upper Class and the Premium Cabin, there is also a proper snacks area where you can help yourself to mid flight treats..

Virgin Atlantic 787 Upper Class Entertainment In Flat Bed

We had some spectacular mountain views as we flew over Pakistani airspace that really made me want to visit Pakistan

As I alluded to earlier though, enjoying these sort of views is just not something this cabin design was made for. You have to sit in a very odd angle and still turn very left to be able to see out that I strained my neck ever so slightly.

So I decided to turn the seat into bed-mode and find something to watch instead..

Now I have to admit, in bed-mode this is a very comfortable seat. It is nowhere near as private as modern Business Class seats are but are just as wide, even not actually wider than even some newer Business products like Turkish 787s!

Virgin’s Vera programming selection is rather decent. What was not was the screen quality, which showed far more age than the 6 year old airframe would suggest otherwise.

The screen is also quite small but since you can bring it fairly close to you, it wasn’t a terrible experience.

A while after finishing a film, I managed to have about an hour snooze.

Virgin Upper Class Pre-landing Meal/Snacks

About 70 minutes before landing, I felt rather peckish.

Now this is the interesting thing here. For a 9 and half hour flight, Virgin do not actually offer a full second meal here, rather as you can see from menu above have a selection of snacks.

I’m not sure what most people do here as this is actually my first time in a Virgin Upper Class flight of this length. I’ve flown short 6 hour east coast night flights where they still serve 2 full meals, even if I decide to skip one of those.

I called the crew and ordered the Peshwari Chicken Burger, this arrived within 10 minutes..

This was delicious. Way better than anything I had during lunch. Problem was, I was still hungry after that, since as the menu suggests, these are very snack sized.

I then enquired about the Spice crusted Karwari Prawns, but sadly I was informed they had just run out of those ! Not sure why I didn’t think to order more of that chicken burger. The crew mentioned they still had some desserts from main menu so I ordered the glazed chocolate ganache instead..

In a way, this did the job of keeping me going until I got home.

Overall Thoughts

This was a very pleasant flight that still felt way shorter than 9 hours. The staff and service was great, very much in tune with Virgin tradition. They always says time goes fast when you’re enjoying yourself right?

I’ve never particularly been a fan of this Upper Class product, even 10 years back. I do love that bar however, and the cabin still looks good despite the dated product design.

Was this an amazing flight? I can’t say it was. The lunch was just distinctly average and I feel it is rather disappointing that they do not do a proper second meal service for such a flight length in Business Class. Unfortunately, it seems to be becoming a trend, with fellow SkyTeam carriers like Air France also doing this for 10 hour day flights!

Again the lesson here, is if flying out of India, and probably applies to many other outstation, opt for the local cuisine!

On some level, perhaps,  I did not entirely make the most of the flight either since it was a day flight and I could have enjoyed some hard drinks with no fear of needing to sleep, but that is on me. Virgin Upper Class is absolutely a treat if you fancy some indulgence.

With a newly revitalised Air India and Vistara Merger, Virgin does have good competition alongside British Airways. This should keep them in their toes for sure!