Brian Hart
Transatlantic Crossing Day 1

england · spain · portugal · bermuda

Transatlantic Crossing Day 1

Back to Southampton after only 2 months

· 4 mins read

  • Start of day: Home in North Carolina
  • End of day: Somewhere over the Atlantic

Time for another solo adventure! You might recall I enjoyed a solo land+cruise trip earlier this year in May, exploring Rome for a few days and then sailing to Spain and Portugal on Silversea.

For October, I found a trans-Atlantic cruise that had a great last minute rate with a desirable stateroom and jumped on it. And when I say “last minute”, I mean: I booked the cruise on Monday afternoon and then flew to London on Thursday!

I did confirm there were some acceptable flight options before clicking the Book It button on the cruise. Delta, my preferred airline, had a fine flight to JFK; from there I’d take a Virgin Atlantic codeshare flight to London-Heathrow.

This was my first experience with Virgin Atlantic, flying Premium Economy. It was okay. It was a little chaotic at the gate at JFK. The inbound aircraft had a problem at Heathrow that forced Virgin to swap the aircraft type from an Airbus A350 (IIRC) over to a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, meaning they had to move some seats around. If you’d printed a boarding pass at home or had it in your Apple Wallet, you needed to visit the desk and get a paper boarding pass, as your seat may have changed. It happens, but the gate staff’s communication about what passengers needed to do1 could’ve been better. We boarded about an hour late but made up the time in the air.

I popped into the Delta Sky Club about 30 minutes before close. This is the one in Terminal 4, Concourse A, near Gate A8. What a treat an almost-empty lounge is.

A plate of braised chicken pieces and garlic-herb spaghetti on a round white marble table in an airport lounge at JFK at night, with a fork and folded napkin beside it. Behind it, a curved white marble counter under a circular gold-trimmed ceiling soffit, a buffet line with glass sneeze guards and pendant lights along the right wall, and floor-to-ceiling windows showing the lit terminal outside

Overhead wayfinding sign in JFK Terminal 4 reading 'Gates A2-A7 | Gates B' and 'Baggage Claim | Exit' on a yellow arrow panel, with a blue panel below pointing to 'Lounges' alongside logos for the Delta One Lounge, The Centurion Lounge, and the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse. Beneath it, a long bright concourse with a striped grey-and-white floor, gate A6 and A7 markers, and travelers walking with luggage

The boarding process aside, the vibes once onboard were decent, and I liked my seat…

The darkened cabin of an overnight transatlantic flight bathed in purple and pink mood lighting, looking at the seatback in front with its entertainment screen playing a film, a handset screen below, and a clear plastic-wrapped blanket tucked into the seat pocket. Overhead bins and another lit seatback screen are visible to the right, and the edge of an e-reader page shows at the bottom of the frame

… but these redeyes that depart at midnight and land at noon are a special kind of hell. I need to start doing the 7pm->7am ones instead, and then just eat the price of a destination hotel room the night before.

Footnotes:

  1. Mine was up-to-date in the Delta app. ↩