bensyd

Couldn't this whole thing have been avoided if VX had a disclaimer on their website that certain facilities are not available on all aircraft?

I agree that OP has gotten a raw deal, VX certainly has no legal obligation to do anything more than transport from A to B but the way it markets itself is as a premium service provider. If I pay for a suite at a hotel and the electricals don't work except for the room light should I be entitled to something? They have still given me the room I paid for.

Having said that I don't think the OP should be entitled to much more, I certainly think the difference between full Y and what he paid would be ample, and given his fare was only $199 shouldn't be much less, if at all less...

articos

Exactly. And, were VX to schedule it, there are two options: notify people at booking, in which case, they're risking everyone scheduling around it, and then flying an empty plane or canceling the flight multiple times, in which case it becomes a spare anyways and that's one less flight per day while still having to spend the money as if the company were going to fly it (or flying it and really losing money)...or...notify people after booking, and having to deal with a bunch of angry passengers (who haven't yet had the opportunity to experience VX's check-in or boarding, or set foot on a plane which is impressive even without the IFE) who would then try to change to other flights or demand refunds and create even more of a nightmare. Much rather have it fly less as a spare. But...as stated, this becomes a moot point in a couple months.

rjque

I'd take option c: make sure my new product (which is the only reason people are even flying VX) is fully operational before launch. First impressions are important. Don't launch a schedule that you can't support with your complete product.

aviators99

I think it really hurts the brand...

EIPremier

Then my conclusion is VX must have very regularly had a plane out-of-service over the past three weeks. I saw 524 arrive or depart SAN with my own eyes over 10 consecutive days in mid-March (no I don't work for VX). I would also point out that the flight was usually right on schedule . And the flight in question was also showing as an A319 a week in advance in the booking engine. Once it switched over to A320 in the booking system, then guess what, no more dark plane coming to SAN. So, you can call it a spare if you want, but it has definitely been in service regularly.

Here's another thing---my understanding was that VX has three A319s in operational service (maybe there are four now). About a month ago, I was looking at booking a couple VX flights for the Easter weekend, and noticed the booking engine showed 2 A319s scheduled for morning JFK-SFO flights, and 1 A319 scheduled for SFO-LAX in the early morning, all on the same day (all three flights would be in the air at the same time). I know VX is not going to put a dark plane on a transcon, so that leaves one A319 left over...hmmmm...maybe I shouldn't book this early morning SFO-LAX flight if I don't want to fly on a dark airplane! And for the record, I did not book that early morning SFO-LAX flight...

OK, I'll shut up now.

GaLupo

Was planning to take my second VA trip LAX to SFO to see some friends thanks for the update guys.

Raindeer

I missed out on a functioning seat with non-manual recline, no massage, no power ports, and no IFE. Given that it was a late flight and I had zero interest in food or booze, the things I PURCHASED the seat for were unavailable.

Everyone has different reasons for flying up front, and those are often mine.

I DID miss out on the F experience as marketed by VX, and, no matter how you want to spin this (and tell folks what the OP missed or didn't miss), as the OP, nothing said has changed my view.

Raindeer

At the time I booked, coach was $49. So, the differential (pre-tax) was $150.

Raindeer

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1207..._us_whats_news

The equity investors have injected another $100 mil into VX. I guess they won't be going the way of Frontier now, yet, but I still wouldn't hold your breath if oil keeps going up....

nermaljcat

w00h00! ^

Raindeer

If they can survive this round of bankruptcies, they should be ok (so long as oil remains stable here). Though, non of the bankruptcies so far represents competitive capacity that would go offline (they didn't go head to head w ATA, Frontier, Aloha, or Skybus with their route network). There should be a positive knockon effect to fares (up) as more capacity goes offline.

However, if oil continues its climb, and recessionary issues continue to pile up, we could see a nasty combination of higher CASM and lower RASM (fares may be up, but yields would go down) that would cause cash burn to accelerate. The investors are likely only willing to fund this business for so long, before they'd scale back to cut their losses.

prismwiz

Good for VX. Lets hope this is enough until the economy starts picking up. Think 1/20/2009+100 days.

F9 only went into bankruptcy because their credit card processor tried to change their agreement to one that would cause F9 to die. Not because of bad biz practices, which were getting better under the new CEO. F9 is not like SX, AQ, or TZ, it has a chance. But that is another forum.

eponymous_coward

So let's assume that when you had gotten on the plane, they had handed a voucher to you for a value we'll call X (X being the amount of the voucher): $25 < X < $150... ignoring the call that you made later complaining about it that's obviously left a bad taste in your mouth.

What would have been a fair amount for X to have been- considering that some of the first class services were still on the plane for you to use, just not all of them? (Yes, I know, you didn't want food or wine. But it's not like you got told to go into coach, either. So I think it's fair for VX to not comp ALL the differential between F and Y on their dark plane- you got more than Y, just less than you expected to get in F.) Or, to put it another way.. what would have made you think "well, that kind of sucked, but they dealt with it well enough that I'd give them another chance", rather than upset enough that you called to complain and ended up with a WORSE experience?

To me, the fact that you ended up feeling worse about things after calling and expressing concern would be MY problem if I got this as a customer service escalation, having worked CS jobs before. That being said... there ARE some customers who you just can't make whole, who just want the moon if something goes wrong. Even if you have 99.9% customer satisfaction, that still means one person in a thousand isn't happy in the end... but there's no reason why that one person should be dealt with dismissively.

Raindeer

That's a fair question. They offered to double to $50, and I felt that, given their lack of sympathy to my issues, it was still fairly thin. I think, had they offered one of two things, when I'd gotten on board, I would have been satisfied:

A) $100 or more in vouchers
B) A free upgrade from coach to F that could have been booked in advance and without capacity constraints (obviously, assuming a seat was available for sale....)

It's sad. I was actually excited to try out VX!!!! My lifetime value to them would have been way more than the expense of making me happy on this. That tells me that their operations or marketing folks aren't thinking straight. I'm also guessing that their folks aren't directly reading this board. Given that there were two of us in F that night, and I believe I was the only to call and complain on that flight, they have enough information to figure out who I am.

I'm guessing Branson's folks don't read this either. If they do, I travel premium class TATL quite a bit. My lifetime value to Virgin Atlantic is likely way more than $100 in vouchers.

SFO 1K

There's an old saying "show me the money".

If you knew how many people claim to have the potential to drive tens of thousands of dollars while looking for a credit, well...

If you had a bunch of advance booking with them and made the claim - see how much I've spent and will continue to spend, that claim holds a bit more water, IME.