British Airways vs. Virgin?

Hi All:

I'll be traveling to Heathrow in the middle of June, and it looks
like I can choose between BA and Virgin for my flights. Not to open
up any cans of worms, but is there any particular reason I should
choose one over the other? I.E., average seat pitch, etc. I'll
most likely be stuck in coach.

Secondarily - does anyone have a general idea of what phone calls
cost from London to the U.S.? I'm trying to find out if it's
worth it for me to rent a GSM phone ( my current wireless provider
offers rentals at $3/day + $1.49/minute ), or just suck it up and
pay the probably rapacious hotel rates.

Thanks,
- Rich

In article ,
user wrote:

Hi All:

I'll be traveling to Heathrow in the middle of June, and it looks
like I can choose between BA and Virgin for my flights. Not to open
up any cans of worms, but is there any particular reason I should
choose one over the other? I.E., average seat pitch, etc. I'll
most likely be stuck in coach.

both have sub-average seat pitch. Is AA an option?

Secondarily - does anyone have a general idea of what phone calls
cost from London to the U.S.? I'm trying to find out if it's
worth it for me to rent a GSM phone ( my current wireless provider
offers rentals at $3/day + $1.49/minute ), or just suck it up and
pay the probably rapacious hotel rates.

Thanks,
- Rich

Not the Karl Orff wrote:

Secondarily - does anyone have a general idea of what phone calls
cost from London to the U.S.? I'm trying to find out if it's
worth it for me to rent a GSM phone ( my current wireless provider
offers rentals at $3/day + $1.49/minute ), or just suck it up and
pay the probably rapacious hotel rates.

1. Have your current phone "unlocked" and buy a sim London, if you have
an international GSM phone. You didn't mention what kinf of phone you have

or

2. Use a calling card and call the US for a few pence per minute.

or

3. rent the gsm phone

user wrote:
I'll be traveling to Heathrow in the middle of June, and it looks
like I can choose between BA and Virgin for my flights. Not to open
up any cans of worms, but is there any particular reason I should
choose one over the other? I.E., average seat pitch, etc. I'll
most likely be stuck in coach.

Seat pitch is the same on both. Virgin used to have better in-flight
entertainment; not sure if they still do. British used to not take seat
reservations for coach passengers; not sure if that's still the case either.
But both of those factors (coupled with the generally pleasanter atmosphere
on Virgin) made me choose Virgin whenever possible back when I used to fly
to London.

Secondarily - does anyone have a general idea of what phone calls
cost from London to the U.S.?

1p (1.7 cents)/minute (plus local call) if you get a cheap card. But really
you can spend as much as you like.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu

"user" wrote in message
...
Hi All:

I'll be traveling to Heathrow in the middle of June, and it looks
like I can choose between BA and Virgin for my flights. Not to open
up any cans of worms, but is there any particular reason I should
choose one over the other? I.E., average seat pitch, etc. I'll
most likely be stuck in coach.


BA have slighty better seat pitch.
VS have fastly superior entertainment.
VS have better food.


Secondarily - does anyone have a general idea of what phone calls
cost from London to the U.S.? I'm trying to find out if it's
worth it for me to rent a GSM phone ( my current wireless provider
offers rentals at $3/day + $1.49/minute ), or just suck it up and
pay the probably rapacious hotel rates.


Buy a phone card it should cost about 5US cents a minute (cheaper than many
calls within the UK).

mrtravelkay wrote:

3. rent the gsm phone

Or buy a used unlocked one on ebay, and a SIM pack for about GBP 10 when
you arrive.
If you can't find one already unlocked, get a Nokia - they're easy to
unlock (free) yourself.
You'll have the phone for future trips, or you can sell/lend it to someone
else.
It's worth it for the convenience.

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 05:01:27 GMT, Miguel Cruz wrote:

But both of those factors (coupled with the generally pleasanter atmosphere
on Virgin) made me choose Virgin whenever possible back when I used to fly
to London.

I find the Virgin atmosphere postively horrible, in fact my last
flight with them was bad enough that I threw away the 2nd leg of it,
and chose a different carrier for the journey rather than pay the
change fee to get it moved to when I needed it.

Jim.

Jim Ley wrote:
Miguel Cruz wrote:
But both of those factors (coupled with the generally pleasanter atmosphere
on Virgin) made me choose Virgin whenever possible back when I used to fly
to London.

I find the Virgin atmosphere postively horrible, in fact my last flight
with them was bad enough that I threw away the 2nd leg of it, and chose a
different carrier for the journey rather than pay the change fee to get it
moved to when I needed it.

Wow, what happened?

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 18:04:06 GMT, Miguel Cruz wrote:

Jim Ley wrote:
Miguel Cruz wrote:
But both of those factors (coupled with the generally pleasanter atmosphere
on Virgin) made me choose Virgin whenever possible back when I used to fly
to London.

I find the Virgin atmosphere postively horrible, in fact my last flight
with them was bad enough that I threw away the 2nd leg of it, and chose a
different carrier for the journey rather than pay the change fee to get it
moved to when I needed it.

Wow, what happened?

Very slow processing at JHB, late without any information leaving JHB,
slow, very unfriendly cabin staff... although to be fair, whilst I
had an onward leg LHR-JFK, it wasn't actually very convenient (plans
changed.) and probably would've cost me more and been a lot less
convenient than LON-YVR I really wanted to do by the time the flight
came round.

Jim.

user wrote in message .. .

deleted

Browse through some of the passenger opinions about BA and Virgin on
the following website.
http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/seats.htm

I have only BA. Virgin seems to have better equipment and food but one
common theme across several opinions seem to be that Virgin flight
attendants are too busy prancing around like models and less occupied
with serving customers. BA flight attendants may not be models but
they work harder with the customers.

Both airlines generally are good bets. I would find it difficult to
choose based on inflight experience. I choose BA because they go
wherever I want to go. BA's American partner is AA, so one can fly to
and from many US cities to Europe by doing a AA/BA combination both of
which have BA flight codes.

Riaz