VA284 CBR-MEL 1850 service, delayed to 1925 due to bird strike inbound that required a full engine check.
PB : enforced fully. As there was a delay I headed back to lounge. By the time boarding was announced there was a huge queue and general boarding had commenced. I wasn’t sure if it was ok to just rock up to the Priority queue. I saw someone do it and I followed them. The boarding agent paused the general queue and boarded everyone in the priority before continuing to board general queue.
Was welcomed both at the gates and the door by CM Kurt and FA Kate. Both very friendly, engaging and cheerful.
PDB : Still water or sparkling wine.
Meals : orders taken row 1, 2 in the order.
Grilled
chucked chicken salad with farro and tahini dressing
Rossini salad - vego option.
I asked Kurt if there were any eggs in the vego dish. He wasn’t sure, but later before serving he bought the iPad and confirmed that there were no eggs in the dish. Kurt may have confused me with another Indian passenger on 1F and showed him the iPad and started explaining the dish, 1F looked visibly confused and later Kurt realised that it was 1A that wanted the know more about the dish. We all had a good laugh about it
The vego dish was very good. The salad leaves were fresh and had a nice crunch to them, as one would expect. I’d definitely have this dish again. In my own way, a small serving of red chillies
could have elevated this dish to the next level. Given the dish was served cold, it could’ve also been good to have had some hot drinks, but we were told no hot drinks will be served on this flight. Unsure why, though.
Wines - Cab Sav, Chardy, pinot Grigio , merlot. I went with the Cab Sav. Was good.
All trays had the cheese and crackers and little red heart chocolates, both of which were stored away for later consumption
Kurt kept checking on the whole cabin every now and then for top ups etc. very attentive crew.
On descent, given the delay, an announcement was made that all connections known to VA will be met. At that time both PER and ADL connections were cutting it fine. The announcement said that the captain who is doing the CBR-MEL is going to do the MEL-PER and the some of the crew are going to be on the MEL-ADL. So we were assured that we will make the connections, which we did, with plenty of time.