Having already purchased slightly more expensive ‘Economy X’ class seats on the flight to Brisbane – Economy seats with a bit ‘extra’ offering more legroom and other benefits like priority boarding – essentially a Premium Economy seat on their Boeing B737-800 – we were offered the opportunity to place a cash bid for an upgrade to Business Class. Not really interested in it but still thinking it would be a nice experience, I put in then minimum cash bid and much to my delight, soon before the day of our flight, I received an email to say we were upgraded to Business Class including receiving assigned seats of 2A and 2C.
On arrival at Proserpine (Whitsunday Coast) Airport, Virgin Australia Business Cass offers priority check-in was quite handy on this busy flight. The 2 counters at the Airport opened around 90 minutes prior to departure and we were about 5th in line in the priority queues as opposed to 30th in the normal queue which was growing rapidly).
Through security and we found that the Whitsunday Coast Airport has had a slight terminal expansion with a new seating area on the Western side including what looks like could be a future gate. Nice views here over the aircraft parking apron and further out to the runway.
Boarding for our flight was called and Business Class passengers are amongst the first to board with Economy X and high-tier level frequent flyers. We walked out along the tarmac to our Boeing B737-800 VH-VOT ‘Scarborough Beach’ which would take us to Brisbane today.
Business class has 8 seats in a 2x layout (there are 168 seats in Economy in a 3x3 layout including the Economy X section) and we were seated in our pre-assigned seats of 2A (Window) and 2C (Aisle).
A pre-flight drink was offered and we chose juice with water and wine also an option.
Boarding concluded and the front door was soon closed and soon after the engines spooled up and we taxied out to Runway 11/29. We lined up and soon were in the air off Runway 11 with a departure track over the stunning blue waters of the Whitsundays, followed by a couple of right turns to fly inland of Mackay, Rockhampton and the Fraser Coast and on to Brisbane.
We had quite a few light bumps between Rocky and our decent point as we were cruising it seems at the bottom of the cloud level.
Meanwhile, it was soon time to sit back in the large seat and enjoy the inflight meal service with the cabin manager and our personal flight attendant firstly giving meal options – a hot beef meal or cold chicken Mexican meal – plus cheese and crackers and drinks and finally a dessert cookie.
The meal as prepared by Luke Mangan was absolutely superb - pity there wasn’t more!
Trays were collected as descent started and after another right turn and a smooth decent we turned finals to Brisbane’s Runway 01 from overhead Archerfield Airport.
Touch down and a quick taxi to gate 46 at the Virgin Australia terminal.
Business Class passengers were afforded the luxury of being able to disembark the plane first, and without being hurried from rest of the passengers the main cabin. In fact, a member of cabin crew stood ‘guard’ at the entrance to main cabin to ensure this!
A long walk from the gate to the baggage area where the final part of the Business Class took place with our bags given priority tags and literally in the first half dozen to come out onto the baggage carousel.
On the whole I was impressed with the Virgin Australia Business Class product. I have flown several times with Qantas Business Class and the two products are quite comparable.
I was most impressed with the fact that for the both of us, the total we paid for the two tickets was around half of a single Business Class seat that would be originally purchased via the Virgin Australia website. Excellent value and an excellent opportunity to experience a little bit of pampering! A great way to start a holiday!
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