Virgin Slave Ship

Virgin Slave Ship

I begin by acknowledging that I will never evoke one gram of sympathy for the plight I will be describing in this story. I am officially on vacation as of three hours ago. We are on our way to Ireland for two weeks with all sorts of family and friends. I booked this trip and the house we have rented nine months ago and made a point of booking the flights at the same time. My mistake started with forgetting how God-awful it is to book a trip through American Express Travel, or most any other third-party agent.

I have been a loyal American Express client since 1976 according to the date on my Platinum Card. That means I have spent millions of dollars through American Express over forty-three years. I honestly don’t know the exact amount, but I bet it’s at least $5 million. I remember hearing about how Eli Broad, the billionaire business builder (Kaufman & Broad, Sun Life and others) once bought a Picasso at auction and insisted on paying the $2 million price at Christie’s with his American Express card, just so he could get the points. Well, I’m no Eli Broad, but my wife and I use AMEX as our primary spending mechanism, so I had 800,000 points accumulated which I was determined to use.

We are going to Western Ireland, so I needed flights to Shannon. Try as I might on AMEX Travel to get direct business class flights to Shannon (using points), the best I could do was get flights to London and then on to Shannon. Since it was all to be business class, I figured we could survive that minor inconvenience. So I booked and used 650,000 of my points for the tickets. I didn’t think about the flights for another eight months.

As the vacation season approached, I started fussing with the details of the trip. The first thing I did was to check to see if we had pre-selected seats to my liking. That’s where the fun began. First I had to remember where and with whom I had booked. There was nothing in my Delta trip roster, so I checked Trip Case (an app I use that holds all my travel plans). There I saw Shannon flights that went JFK – Heathrow – Shannon – Heathrow – Newark. Strange, but not unheard of to fly out of one NYC airport and into another. They are equidistant from our apartment, so no problem. Uber works everywhere. However, the first and last legs were on Virgin Atlantic and the Ireland flights were on Aer Lingus.

When I finally unearthed the email from AMEX Travel (I really must address my email filing system some day), it gave me the necessary confirmation code to go into the Virgin website to search out the flight details. I know enough about AMEX Travel to know that they are useless once the flights are booked and they will just direct me to the carrier, so I knew that’s where I was headed anyway. Virgin’s website worked fine and I got to the seat map and saw that we indeed had cross-aisle sleeper seats in Upper Class on the Virgin flight to and from London. I used to travel on Virgin in the ‘90s and remember Richard Branson’s airline quite fondly for its service, it’s lounges (Playhouses) and its seat comfort.

Then I went to try to select seats on the Aer Lingus flights, but no go. I was politely informed that my business class seats would need to be arranged directly with Aer Lingus. There’s a joke in this that goes something like, what’s worse that dealing with an airline through an agent? Dealing with an airline through another airline through an agent. I couldn’t believe I was so dumb as to put myself in this position. I know better.

Naturally, the Virgin confirmation code did not work for Aer Lingus, so there was no online option and I had to call Aer Lingus. You know how that goes. When is a short wait time to call an airline reservation desk? I called at 11:30 pm. The Aer Lingus call center does not provide estimated waiting times, so I put the phone on speaker and watched the news. At 12:05, Aer Lingus announced that their U.S. call center was closing and my call was being shunted to their international call center. Other than slightly different Muzak, it was the same program without wait times. Finally, by 12:15 I was connected with Rahul somewhere in Southeast Asia.

Rahul offered me an aisle, window or middle seat. I explained that there was a mistake since I was flying business class. Rahul said Aer Lingus offered no business class on intra-continental flights. I said that could not be so since I was ticketed business class. That all went nowhere in Pidgeon English, so I asked what seats I was being given. Rahul said I was getting a Premium Economy. It took four iterations with Rahul to pry out of him that Premium Economy only meant I didn’t have to pay for luggage. No extra legroom, no free drink, no extra peanuts. I took an aisle and window and have some (but not full) confidence that the seat in between is free and may not get filled. I pity the poor soul who gets it.

So now I am on the luxurious Virgin Upper Class flight. Hmmm, things sure have changed since the ‘90s. Our dinner and service in the Playhouse was excellent. The cabin though has come under the design rule of some 5’1” 105 pound ergonomic vegan engineer. I fly in lots of business class flat seats. I thought British Airways was the worst, but now Virgin wins that title. Imagine one of those antique lithographs of the hold of those Portuguese West African slave ships. They had to cram in bodies at a 30 degree angle to maximize the number of souls on board. Everyone was cheek to jowl lying down. That is where Virgin Upper Class has found its efficient self.

I admit I am a broad man, but I’ve been through TSA scanners that are roomier than those coffins in Upper Class. I suspect they measured an old CAT-scan machine and used that for dimensions. I told the guy next to me to warn me before he rolled over. And Kim was indeed across the aisle by seat number, but the geography of the seat numbers do not line up. Her feet are where my head was supposed to go. And the ergonomic brain-trust designer did not make seats that you can recline yourself. The attendant has to flip your seat over and put down a mattress pad.

What this all tells me is that Virgin is a short (stock-wise) because they’ve lost their grip on reality and will be losing customers by the dozen. I am actually sitting here looking forward to my Aer Lingus Premium Economy flight just to get off this Virgin slave ship.