With just 2.5hrs between your UK flight arrival and your onward connection, I wouldn't bother with lounge access.

The arrivals hall at ANU is rather chaotic and I suspect you will soon spend your connection time just waiting in the queues of people trying to get through immigration. We arrived on a Virgin Atlantic flight last year. Some of the first off the aircraft but a bmi flight had landed 1.5h before us. The tail end of that flight was still being processed through passport control. It took us about 1 hr to get through to the baggage hall area (also chaotic).

Once off the plane and in the terminal you will find transfer desks before immigration/passport control. Caribbean Star and Liat flights were being checked in. Many passengers and even the VS crew were travelling onwards and went to these desks first after landing.

ANU is rather small and I think you will end up spending your time just going to the transfer desk on arrival, clearing immigration, climbing over the suitcases in the mess that is called the baggage reclaim area, walking out of arrivals hall, turning right and walking back into the departures area and security into the normal departure lounge.

Thanks for that - largely what we had expected on the outbound journey .

We may though still be tempted to go for the lounge on the return trip as presumably won't need to collect and re-process baggage as we are hoping it will be tagged straight through to the UK from Beef Island (or will it ???????)

Not sure on that one. Like you, I would suspect that would be the case. It might be worth checking with the airline on the policy they have for thru check-in.

the exec lounge is the biggest disappointment! We spent 20 mins there and then left. It is small, and we had to go off and find someone who actually worked there. Food consisted of a half empty plate of carrots and cucumber with dip. The lounge/restaurant just outside was a far better place!

The ANU saga has just got worse. Caribbean star have just cancelled our onward flight - and have "automatically rebooked " us on a flight at 19.00 (which must go via somewhere as it apparantly takes an hour longer than the previous one!) We now have almost 6 hours in ANTIGUA before our connection to EIS.

Now we are in the situation of checking in at LGW at 6am and not getting to final destination until around 4am the following morning UK time. Not exactly a great start to a 7 day holiday!!! Worse bit is that we will now arrive too late to check in for the following days diving - so will lose a whole day of diving as a result to further compound my annoyance!

There is an earlier Caribbean Sun flight we could connect to (would save us around 3 hours of transit time in ANU) - but Virgin say that the Caribbean Star flight is non-refundable - so we would have to pay an excess charge (£80pp?) to change airlines. Since we never originally booked the later Caribbean Star flight, is it usual for Virgin to charge effectively a cancellation fee for cancelling a cancelled flight? (if you get my drift??)

Would be grateful for any bright ideas on this one - or if anyone has any ideas about how to entertain ourselves in ANU for 4 or 5 hours (once baggage/immigration etc has been sorted) they would be useful. Is there anywhere localish to the airport that would be worth a visit to help pass the time if we can't exticate ourselves from the current transit mess up!?

Have you looked on the Caribbean Star web site for the fare for the flight you would prefer? I believe the airline has been restructured recently and is trying to reinvent itself as a low cost carrier. Just wondered if you might pick up the tickets cheaper direct on the Caribbean Star web site. I might well be tempted to just buy the tickets for the earlier service rather than spend extra time at ANU.

Ended up ringing Caribbean Star yesterday who are now saying that the ONLY flight from ANU to EIS on our travel date is at 19.00.All earlier flights have been cancelled apparantly!"!
Wouldn't have booked that particular routing if we had know that to be the case - as could easily have gone via BGI - but we are stuck with it as Virgin won't change the transatlantic leg. 6 hours in ANU it is then

Still seems unfair that an airline can cancel a booked flight with absolutely no recourse for the passenger - not even a LRV - and leave them stranded somewhere they don't want to be for a wholly inappropriate amount of time. We are definitely incurring costs because of this (a minimum of 30USD a head as a late night transfer surcharge to our hotel - assuming we arrived when Caribbean Star now say we will - if it's delayed, we will miss the transfer altogether and have to pay for overnight accom in EIS.)

Now I'm worried that the return leg from EIS to ANU will suffer the same fate - in which case we'll miss our flight home! Have just spoken to someone else who says that Caribbean Star are notoriously unreliable. What would be the situation if that did indeed happen???