CorporateFlyer

Flew Syd Mel last week in J and noted the following:
- no personal welcome
- no pre take off drink
- no offer of newspaper
- no option on meal, afternoon flight and the meal was a tomato/ham scroll, which was inedible. No choice or veg option, asked for something off the normal menu
- had new iPads, very limited choice and possibly the worst headsets that I have seen, so bad it was impossible to hear the iPad, even at full volume

It may have just been an odd flight, but if you want to sell J class you need consistent high service across all J flights.

notzac

Kind of curious to know whether you were on a snack flight or a meal flight? I generally fly at meal times and there have always been two options, one of which has always been vegetarian-friendly ... I don't know whether snack flights get the same options.

Agreed that the headphones for the tablets are appalling (solution: bring your own, though VA should definitely provide something that's at least listenable), and the range of content is very limited. Maybe this will be fixed up once the wireless streaming stuff gets installed?

CorporateFlyer

It was a snack time flight, but previously I had also had choice on a snack flight (risotto and salad) - may have been a catering issue last week...

ozstamps

Biz costs a LOT of money.

A newspaper and pre-flight drink costs a dollar or 2.

Dumb to skip that little touch.
.

QF Lad

I am a regular J class domestic passenger, and after a number of quite forgettable VA J class flights (3 of which I have posted about in this forum), I went back to QF.

VA don't have a terrible product, but the QF is better by a considerable margin.

nonce

Similar comments when I picked my wife up at the airport last night. She had been reseated onboard as she was the only female in J and with a full flight they needed someone to sit next to the unaccompanied minor. Crew served up inedible food then vanished behind the curtain, no refill of the wine, no thanks for looking after someone else's kiddie during the flight (or even checking that said kiddie was OK), nothing. Given that in our house wife=CFO will make it very hard to fly Virgin over QF in future.

Not like the Virgin J from a few months ago. Wonder if the crew are a bit over the extra work required for having a J cabin vs what was required just needing to push the trolley down twice during a flight, once to sell some food, the second time to collect the trash?

It's just 8 PAX Virgin, surely you can look after 8 PAX with one person for 90 minutes at a time?

juliusg

Virgin Australia added an extra crew member when they introduced J on the 737. So there is no excuse, on any flight, for anything less than proper service. I've mentioned once previously (one out of 10 J flights) a 'go hide behind curtain' crew member, where my drink top up needed my intervention.

But 9 out of 10 737 and all 4 Perth A330 flights have been great!

The Samsung Galaxy is another matter - half charged, and with terrible (!) ear pieces. When I used my headphones, the gain needed to be fully up, and it was only just loud enough. So there is a problem there....

AndDee

Agree with this, and it's happened to me a few times!

But they are Samsung Tablets, not iPads

AndDee

Indeed