Twin Seat on Virgin Atlantic Review – Recently we travelled to Orlando from Edinburgh with Virgin Atlantic on a Airbus A350. Most of the plane in the economy section is in the layout 3-3-3, which means that if you are travelling as a couple or an adult with a single child you will need to sit next to someone you don’t know. Not that sitting next to someone you don’t know is the end of the world, but sometimes it’s nice to be just the two of you.
I have flown British Airways and Emirates in the past and have tried out the twin seats on both airlines. You can read my review of the twin seat on Emirates here and the twin seat on British Airways here.
Unlike Emirates and British Airways, the twin seats on the Virgin Atlantic Airbus A350 flight were at the front of a bank of economy seats. Conversely, both Emirates and British Airways twin seats were at the back of the plane where the plane body becomes more narrow.
Being at the front had pros and cons on Virgin Atlantic. The obvious benefit was that there was lots (and lots) of legroom. The main negative was that the area in front of you was where people tended to gather to wait for the toilet. I took a photo from a friend’s seat, where you can see passengers congregating around the twin seat at the front. (Another potential negative is that the large gap between the chair and the plane wall encourages the person in the seat behind you to use it as a corridor).
Also, rather than being able to place your hand luggage under the seat in front of you, you needed to place it above. I wasn’t keen on this as I like to keep my hand luggage handy with all my myriad of gubbins in it! Worse than the inconvenience of that though, is that you need to be quick to bag yourself some overhead locker storage. If you don’t have any immediately above you, the flight attendant will help find some space, but it might be further down the plane.
The main reason for choosing the twin seat is still valid in that there is just the two of you with no extra person sat next to you. There is also extra room for the person nearest the window as there is a big gap between the seat and the side of the plane.
As there are no seats in front of you, your entertainment system is not in the back of the chair in front, but stored in your seat rest. This then extends out and around.
Vera – Virgin’s Entertainment System
The teens were in the row behind and had regular economy seats so we got to experience these as well. The main thing I’d like to talk about is the entertainment system which is known as Vera. There was a good assortment of films, TV and podcasts both in English and other languages.
My main gripe with the entertainment system is that the headphones that are provided are rubbish. Don’t get me wrong. I would rather have entertainment with rubbish headphones then no entertainment at all but the headphones really were very poor and badly fitting.
It was not possible to pair my Bluetooth headphones with the entertainment screen. At least, I don’t believe it was possible – let me know if it was just me being incompetent!? Below the entertainment screen, there is a USB for charging your devices and above this there is a USB and audio jack. I tried connecting my Bluetooth headphones to the USB and this didn’t work but I wonder whether if I had had a cable with an audio jack, whether this would have worked. If no one has commented on this post in the meantime and you’ve read this, I would definitely invest in a cheap audio jack to try this out. If it works, you can thank me later!
