just completed a round trip YVR --> LHR. Worst flying experience ever. I Jknow I'm in the minority as I'm sure Virgin is a very good airline, but my personal experience was just plain awful. You know what they say about first impressions! Anyway...here's what I just posted to Virgin's customer service. I don't expect anything in return...I just want them to know that we were not impressed:
"What a disappointment flying Virgin Atlantic. This was my first and will be my last time flying with your airline. I am a frequent international business traveler with Premier 1K elite status on United Airlines, so I know a good product when I see it (and no...I'm not saying United has a good product...I'm just saying I fly often enough to recognize good service and experience from bad). Virgin definitely did not in any way provide the level of experience I would have expected from a supposed top-tier international carrier.
It all started with our outbound flight, Vancouver to London on June 28th. The plane was an obviously older A340. The interior was just very outdated and worn. The safety video sound was horrendous. You could barely make out what was being said. The video quality was also horrible (and not just the safety video). Many channels were simply unwatchable due to the static and lines across the screen. And then to learn that the movies were NOT on-demand? Not offering on-demand video choices is just plain unacceptable in this day and age, especially from a carrier of your caliber.
And then we land in London. Luggage nowhere to be seen. Turns out our luggage never even made it onto the flight, even with a 2+ hour connection in YVR. We landed at 1 PM in London on Friday, the 29th. We didn't receive our luggage until 9:30 PM Sunday night, the 1st of July. 56 hours later. When we were first notified at LHR that our luggage didn't make the flight, we were informed of the £50 / person allowance. When I finally received word that our luggage was located and would arrive on Sunday the 1st, I was told that we were NOT entitled to a second allowance of £50 / person because our luggage had been located and was in the process of being "delivered". This is absolutely contradictory to the information detailed on your website (
http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/us/en...d-baggage.html). From your website: "If your bag still hasn’t reached you 48 hours after you landed and reported it missing, a further $50 (or the equivalent of £50 in destinations outside the US) can be claimed when you return home. Just make sure you inform us and keep all of your receipts!" Our bags did not reach our hotel for 56 hours after landing and reporting it missing. Therefore per your own words, we should indeed be entitled to an additional £50 / person for all of our incidental charges as a direct result of our luggage being delayed. I therefore expect to be reimbursed up to £100 pounds / person due to the fact that "bag still hasn’t reached you 48 hours after you landed and reported it missing".
Now for the return flight. I would like to make it CRYSTAL CLEAR that your website would NOT permit me to access our reservation online (I couldn't reserve seats, request special meals, check-in, etc). For whatever reason, a multi-segment, multi-carrier itinerary just doesn't play nicely with your website. I spoke to several individuals in your reservations department and finally got ONE of them to acknowledge that your website wouldn't support my itinerary and therefore any changes / seat assignments, etc would have to be done by calling in to your reservations center. During one of these calls, I had our seats assigned. I specifically chose certain seats for our family of four so that we would be sitting together, and I was NEVER informed that our seats would be given away if we didn't check-in 13 hours prior to scheduled departure. Upon arriving Heathrow (we were connecting from Edinburgh on British Midland) and checking in at the Virgin Atlantic transfer counter, we were told that our seats were given away as we didn't check in 24 hour in advance "like we were supposed to". Again, NO ONE ever told us we were required to do this in order to retain the seats that we had reserved months in advance. Secondly, your website wouldn't allow me to check-in online anyway! I have NEVER had this problem in the past with any other carrier, and I've flown MANY multi-segment, multi-airline itineraries in the past. Suffice it to say, we were NOT happy, but fortunately found a nice couple on-board that was willing to switch seats with us. Definitely un-needed stress. Furthermore, upon boarding the plane your "greeter" flight attendants were quite rude. We told them the scenario (needing to switch seats due to ours being given away), and one of them mocked me as I walked away (my wife witnessed him) when I made a mistake as to where our seats were. We honestly thought about getting off the plane and paying for a different flight home.
Inflight experience on the return flight to YVR was identical to the outbound flight to LHR (same old A340 perhaps?). The interior decor was old and worn. The audio on the safety presentation was inaudible. The video was grainy with lines. 5 or 6 of the video channels in flight couldn't even be viewed due to the ridiculously bad picture quality. Disney channel was completely un-viewable due to the picture quality. Not good when traveling with two young kids. Again....need to get with the times and upgrade to on-demand video. Food was decent (although we did order Kids meals, and some of the "kids" snacks being served were identical to what the adults got!). For example, our kids were provided cheese sandwich with onions (same as what we got). What kid likes onions on their cheese sandwich?!?!?!
Then the final straw....we land in Vancouver and go to retrieve our luggage. Sure enough, one of our bags didn't make the flight from Vancouver even with there being 2 hours between connections. In all my years of flying, I've only had one experience with an airline 'losing' my luggage, and it was for very legitimate reasons. So on both directions, VS loses our luggage.
Never in my life have I experienced these kinds of hassels and poor quality. Were I flying a "lesser" low-cost carrier, I wouldn't have been that surprised to receive the kind of treatment that we received. Never in my life though did I think our worst flying experience to-date would be with Virgin Atlantic (and we've flown to many destinations around the world)."