Over on the Business Traveller forums, superchris is seeking company in misery as he describes his experience on an exceptionally uncomfortable flight to Johannesburg:

I spent Sunday night on the Virgin flight to Johannesburg in what felt like near freezing conditions due to a malfunctioning air conditioning unit in the Premium Economy cabin blowing out only cold air. …

 

Unfortunately moving seat, even downgrading was not an option, neither was having an spare blanket given it was a full flight …

 

I wondered if anyone has ever experienced the same

Though I don’t mean to diminish superchris’s plight, or the worthiness of this discussion topic, he concludes his initial post with an aside that in my opinion steals the show:

Whilst Im moaning at Virgin Atlantic, any one else think their habit of announcing the passenger and crew numbers in their welcome message sounds more like an accident statistic in the next days papers??!!

Now that’s an interesting point of discussion. If it’s even possible to hijack one’s own thread superchris might have done it, as openfly quickly replied with the following:

Announcing the pax load on VS is odd. I can only think that it is to warn you that the service will be slow because they have so many passengers and so few cabin crew!

Others however bring the thread right back to topic though and so far at least the topic of Virgin’s announcements of passenger and crew loads has subsided in favor of stories about exceptionally cold flights.

Darn it.

So, if you have been on very cold flights and want to share your tale or find out how it compares to others, you should click on over to the thread. (I mock, but there are actually some pretty interesting accounts of how different crews handle the situation in better/worse ways).

Or if, like me, you are more interested in the aside than the main discussion topic, please share your thoughts about Virgin’s announcements in the comments section below.

Should they announce how many “souls” are on board?

Would it be helpful to announce how many passengers-per-exit-door that calculates out to?

Read the thread in its entirety: Cabin temperature – how cold is too cold?