Virgin horror story

What is the point of putting on your website that one can check in at 12.30 at Havana airport when in fact you cannot until 4pm? The omens for another spectacularly ordinary flight with at the appalling Virgin Atlantic back to London Gatwick were good. The plan then to jettison bags early and then pop out for a sneaky last lunch were dashed by this useless piece of information. Dickie Pickles will be getting the sharp end of my pen in the coming days. His airline has now forever damaged the Virgin brand in my mind. It was not just the misinformation, they had run out of wine 2 hours into the 9 hour outward trip thus making a mockery of their claim to serve drinks throughout the trip and the in flight entertainment was limited of poor quality both artistically and technologically with constant fuzzy lines and black outs on the very few things worth watching

The trip back was little better, with once again no stewardess in sight I stirred myself to go the the galley myself. Finding no one at the first one I went to the second one where the curtain was drawn. Asking for a for a glass of wine was clearly an affront to the rude member of staff who tersely asked me to give her a couple of minutes as she was doing some kind of calculation. A full five minutes elapsed and she had still no emerged but luckily some other hapless helper eventually arrived. Disgraceful service from people trained to offer a service. Had she been in my employ then she would now be looking at her P45.

Then that nice lady decorator got in on the act. The idea was to try to sleep on the plane. She even had a sleeping pill to aid her, but someone must have tainted it with some Columbian marching powder or something similar as she was like a Jack in the box, drinking a litres of water and waking me up four times to go to the loo. So, an utterly sleepless, mainly dry, miserable experience. I shall never complain about Easyjet again. Virgin Atlantic is officially the worst airline with whom I have flown, worse on this trip than Ryanair.

My picture today is of my personal favourite vehicle I saw in Havana. The sheer number of great old cars, many used as taxi’s on the road each day is something wonderous to behold. At least 25 per cent of the cars on the road must be old American models from the 1950’s or earlier, many in a desperate condition and doing a great deal to enhance Cuba’s carbon footprint, but as a spectacle and a testament to the American embargo (incidentally being flouted by a number of Americans who can gain entrance via Cancun in Mexico) it is hard to better. Cuba I love, Virgin Atlantic I hate.

So by the time my phalanx of readers are excitedly reading this, we shall be back in the tender embrace of dear old England where I am informed that the weather in the coming days will be unseasonably pleasant, so I should be able to get away with only buying one winter coat ofthe type I do not need to posses when in France.