Hit by the LGW-MCO Curse

I loathe VS attitude to this route! I have said it time and time and time again.

To attempt to avoid this, booking VS against my better judgement (as BA firmly holds my business just now) and to use 100k miles on a reward seat I booked the MAN-MCO Route.

I am out in Orlando right now. Just packing to fly home this evening.

I thought I would check the flight status. 3 hour delay. But what has this to do with LGW-MCO you ask? Well the outbound MAN-MCO route took off 15 minutes early and will arrive around 45 mins early at around 2-15pm local time.

Unfortunately for me they seem to want to rotate the aircraft with the 1.5 hour late departing LGW-MCO aircraft which is due to land 6:35pm - 5 minutes AFTER our expected departure time.

How do I know they are rotating that aircraft? Well I don't 'know', i have worked it out. There appear to only be 2 VS fights into MCO today and despite the LGW arriving late, it it due to depart on-time at 7:40pm

What I don't understand is why they don't consider changing the rotation. The MAN flight will sit on the ground from 2:15pm until it departs for LGW at 7:40pm - Why not let the MAN flight depart on-time.

VS, I know you monitor these boards. Our relationship is all but over. You have failed to address the poor service on the MCO route as I am a true believer of voting with your wallet I will always consider an alternative carrier before VS.

This leaves me with a dilemma of what to do with nearly 100k miles, but right now I would rather forget them or give them to my family.



[:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!]

Paul

Paul,

This rotation takes place pretty much every Sunday. It's not something that is specific to today only. It's unfortunate that your envolved in a delay today, however I don't think it would be worth VS changing a scheduled rotation for a relatively small delay.

If the delay was 5-6 hours then it may be worth it in my opinion.

I'm sorry I cannot be more sympathetic but I can see the logic in not cancelling a scheduled rotation of aircraft in this case.

I hope the rest of your trip is enjoyable. [:)]

Perhaps they had no choice but to rotate the aircraft that day due to hangar maintenance being due???

Yes this is a regular practice with flights that come in to MCO. Sometimes the reason is maintenace rotation and other times it is to keep the LGW fleet on time as well, as the flight times/ turn arounds for all the routes there are very tight, and there is more flexibility with ground time at the MAN base. I know that this can suck badly and is often the luck of the draw.

I understand the need for rotation. Really I am just venting frustration that VS still allow extended delays to occur on the LGW/MCO route and these are impacting elsewhere. I am really at the end of my tether with VS on this route. I make this trip a minimum of 3 or 4 times a year. Always Upper/Business. Always with at least one other passenger.

Additionally I send others on a further 3 or so occasions (Generally PE). I cannot remember the last time I wasn't significantly put out by delays at one end or both during prior visits.

Enough is enough, My membership here should demonstrate that I have loyalty to VS as does my Gold FC Status however I now consider myself an ex customer of VS.

Paul

Not just the LGW mate.

On 1st Jan MAN to MCO was delayed by 2 hours, when we got on the plane we were delayed a further 90 Mins because a crew member had not bothered to turn up.

[Darren Wheeler]

Originally posted by stu
Not just the LGW mate.

On 1st Jan MAN to MCO was delayed by 2 hours, when we got on the plane we were delayed a further 90 Mins because a crew member had not bothered to turn up.

'not bothered to turn up'? Isn't that a little harsh?

They could have been in a accident, suddenly taken ill etc. etc. Unless the FSM has made an announcement to that effect (highly unlikely) there could be any reason for the flight being delayed.

[RichardMannion]

Originally posted by stu
Not just the LGW mate.

On 1st Jan MAN to MCO was delayed by 2 hours, when we got on the plane we were delayed a further 90 Mins because a crew member had not bothered to turn up.

They can go crew down to an extent too. Crew are compensated too for this.

See I don't really have an issue with the MCO route, I know what I am getting upfront and the Z fares tend to reflect it too. Delays do happen, and they affect every airline as such so I don't tend to let it bother me. I've seen VS hand miles out to customers in the LGW CH to apologise for a 2 hour delay before on the MCO route.

Paul

Sorry to hear of your delay. 1.5 Hours IMHO is not that much of a delay, it could well have left LGW only 45 minutes late but experienced strong head winds or got caught up in ATC problems on the way which have lengthened the delay. As Denzil points out the problem is the a/c may have to be in maintenance. I certainly do not think that VS have an attitude to the route, they are doing the best they can with a small LGW fleet. I think you would agree that the current situation is a lot better than it was back in the day with Club Orlando or whatever it was called on the leased 742's from Air Atlanta.

About eight months ago I posted a very lengthy post (including stats) on this issue and those participating in the debate came to the conclusion that the MCO route, believe it or not, experiences less delays than some of its LHR siblings. The high fleet ultilisation of the LGW fleet does not help the issue and the timing of the MCO flights (last to depart LGW etc) but at the end of the day the stats showed that MCO is not the worse performing VS route in terms of delay.

Originally posted by Darren Wheeler

Originally posted by stu
Not just the LGW mate.

On 1st Jan MAN to MCO was delayed by 2 hours, when we got on the plane we were delayed a further 90 Mins because a crew member had not bothered to turn up.

'not bothered to turn up'? Isn't that a little harsh?

They could have been in a accident, suddenly taken ill etc. etc. Unless the FSM has made an announcement to that effect (highly unlikely) there could be any reason for the flight being delayed.

The Captain made an announcement that the CC member hadnt turned up and no one could get hold of him. When he did eventually turn up he was laughing and thinking it was all a joke. Whilst i dont know exctly it seemed to me like he had slept in. I wonder if the fact it was Jan 1st had anything to do with it [;)]

[RichardMannion]

Originally posted by stu
The Captain made an announcement that the CC member hadnt turned up and no one could get hold of him. When he did eventually turn up he was laughing and thinking it was all a joke. Whilst i dont know exctly it seemed to me like he had slept in. I wonder if the fact it was Jan 1st had anything to do with it [;)]

Borrowed from Pam Ann:

Maybe the Do Not Disturb sign was on the inside of the room.

Originally posted by stu

Originally posted by Darren Wheeler

Originally posted by stu
Not just the LGW mate.

On 1st Jan MAN to MCO was delayed by 2 hours, when we got on the plane we were delayed a further 90 Mins because a crew member had not bothered to turn up.

'not bothered to turn up'? Isn't that a little harsh?

They could have been in a accident, suddenly taken ill etc. etc. Unless the FSM has made an announcement to that effect (highly unlikely) there could be any reason for the flight being delayed.

The Captain made an announcement that the CC member hadnt turned up and no one could get hold of him. When he did eventually turn up he was laughing and thinking it was all a joke. Whilst i dont know exctly it seemed to me like he had slept in. I wonder if the fact it was Jan 1st had anything to do with it [;)]

Are you positive it was the same crew member, or could it possibly be a crew member on stand by called in to take their place??

It was almost certainly a new crew member called from standby.

It also sounds as though the crew member that needed replacing was either a CSS or an FSM, otherwise the flight would have gone without him without question.

It may well have been a London based CSS / FSM called out to cover the sickness at MAN (as MAN is a tiny crew base) - in which case they would have had to have been shuttled up from LON on a BA flight.

VS crew do not just 'not bother to turn up'.

It was a new crew member. Whoever was called in was specifically chosen because they were trained on the defib machine. The plane couldn't leave with crew down as there was only one on board who was trained on that machine.

David

(This could have been communicated to the passengers more clearly [:w] )

Only CSS & FSM defib trained & minimum of 2 defib trained crew required.

[Darren Wheeler]

I would have thought all crew should be defib trained. The course is normally 4 hours with a practical exam at the end for normal defib. Most modern defibs are almost idiot-proof too.

Originally posted by RichardMannion
See I don't really have an issue with the MCO route, I know what I am getting upfront and the Z fares tend to reflect it too. Delays do happen, and they affect every airline as such so I don't tend to let it bother me. I've seen VS hand miles out to customers in the LGW CH to apologise for a 2 hour delay before on the MCO route.

See I don't agree. MCO Z fare is now £1500 or more. Discounted UC fares to NYC, SFO and LAX sometimes roll in at £1300. So whilst in straight comparison perhaps MCO Z vs LAX Z are cheaper MCO Z are never put on sale. As someone who has to travel to MCO frequently but has a lot of flexibility about when I can take sale options if/when they appear.

And who decided that the MCO crowd don't want to have all the LHR treatment and as such save a few quid? Not me.

I have never seen anyone get miles in the clubhouse for a 2 hour delay. Someone mentioned my delay was 1.5 hours. It wasn't, it was about 3, maybe more by the time we got off the ground.

So in summary my view of MCO route vs say LAX is:-
No On board Masseuse
No LHR Clubhouse
Only 14 UC Seats - 1 of which generally G
Frequent Late Departures
Hit and Miss Priority Boarding
No Priority Debarkation due to seat layout
No VPort
Less Attentive CC (This is a subjective one I appreciate that)

It's all kind of moot now anyway, as I have already decided to fly BA unless something changes, or BA is full.

Paul

Having just booked to MCO, I was surprised at your price comparison so I checked current rates.
For Mid Nov, returning mid Dec:
London - MCO - Lon. £1412 (Z)
SFO & LAX are twice the price at £2795 (Z)
NYC although much shorter flight is still £2251 (Z)

Perhaps the MCO flights (both from London & MAN) are regarded by many as such good deals that they are very quickly fully booked - so would never get to Sale status!

Only 14 UC seats - that is one of the great advantages IMHO - much more personal service - CC have time for a friendly chat.

Priority boarding and debark. - on that I would fully agree with you - VS really need to do something about this!

[RichardMannion]

Originally posted by p17blo
See I don't agree. MCO Z fare is now £1500 or more. Discounted UC fares to NYC, SFO and LAX sometimes roll in at £1300. So whilst in straight comparison perhaps MCO Z vs LAX Z are cheaper MCO Z are never put on sale. As someone who has to travel to MCO frequently but has a lot of flexibility about when I can take sale options if/when they appear.

And who decided that the MCO crowd don't want to have all the LHR treatment and as such save a few quid? Not me.

I have never seen anyone get miles in the clubhouse for a 2 hour delay. Someone mentioned my delay was 1.5 hours. It wasn't, it was about 3, maybe more by the time we got off the ground.

So in summary my view of MCO route vs say LAX is:-
No On board Masseuse
No LHR Clubhouse
Only 14 UC Seats - 1 of which generally G
Frequent Late Departures
Hit and Miss Priority Boarding
No Priority Debarkation due to seat layout
No VPort
Less Attentive CC (This is a subjective one I appreciate that)

It's all kind of moot now anyway, as I have already decided to fly BA unless something changes, or BA is full.

Paul

See, I think you're being overly harsh here. £1500 is the published Z fare. Not a sale fare. Yes the other routes are sometimes on sale, but no guarantee and the majority of the time most of the LHR Z fares are way past £2k as Bill has rightly researched. I have seen MCO Upper on sale before but then it depends on loads. I can count on one hand the number of times LAX/SFO have been under £1500 for Upper, whereas an Upper to MCO in Z is £1500 throughout the year pretty much.

Do VS treat the B&S routes as second class citizens? In all honesty, I think they do in some ways but we know that upfront and the prices reflect it. What would you rather do? Fly in Economy? Compare the price difference between Economy and Upper on the MCO route to that of the NYC, LAX etc routes. Take MIA, barring the current £1499 sale - the Z's hover around the £2200 mark, so nearly £700 more and MIA isn't too far from MCO.

I've spent a good deal of time flying VS from LGW on the MCO route, and wouldn't say its cursed. Yes there are some crew that hate working the route and show disdain and contempt fot the customers, but trust me, their days are very much numbered.

No On board Masseuse
- agreed, but then with a cabin of upto 48 J passengers on ex-LHR, there is no guarantee of a treatment anyway, especially if you had a treatment in the CH.

No LHR Clubhouse
- confused. Yes LHR is the flagship, but the LGW CH is hardly a ServisAir lounge. It puts all of the BA Terraces rooms I have ever used to shame. Fantastic service, and has a full salon/V.Touch facility.

Only 14 UC Seats - 1 of which generally G
- really confused. Only 14? I don't see an issue with that as such. By default there may be only 1 G, but then more can be made available. Depends on loads of course.

Frequent Late Departures
- Maybe, but then LHR is not exactly squaeky clean here. My first evening in MCO is normally wasted by me being tired anyway so if I rock up an hour or two later in the evening I'm not exactly bothered. I could arrive on time and then spend an hour plus at immigration or the car hire queue.

Hit and Miss Priority Boarding
- agreed, though it is getting better. And it was BA that thought it clever at Christmas to have two queues open yet no priority boarding?

No Priority Debarkation due to seat layout
- right, but exactly how many people get off before J is unloaded? It must add all of a minute or two.

No VPort
- agreed. Yet I've sat on flights with V:port and had a quagmire of rubbish to choose from. For the short-ish flight it is I can always find work to do on my laptop, or stuff to watch/listen on my iPod.

Less Attentive CC (This is a subjective one I appreciate that)
- agreed. It is subjective, and I for sure ahve had some abysmal service onboard in the last year.

We tried flying BA on multiple sectors at Christmas in Club and in First and I was disappointed to be honest. The grass isn't greener on the otherside, and I have found Executive Club to be on par with an ashtray on a motorbike.

Just to clarify my thoughts on a couple of points

14 seats - I find, even in the quietest time now, that all of those 14 seats are full. Whether they have been upgraded or paid for I don't know. As I often try to pay for 1 seat and get 1 G seat if possible it often annoys me that I cannot do this despite watching availability from when the seats are released. I cannot book 1 seat at 335 days and hope that I can bag a G 5 days before departure.

BA has approx 24-30 Business seats on their MCO Configured 777s and I would like to see LGW using the same config as LHR. There certainly seems to be demand and as an upshot of this maybe 1 extra G could be made available.

For me, the executive club is a means to an end. I earn miles for flying, I trade them for discount or free flights. On this premise Executive Club is currently better for me than Flying Club.

I am not sure I would consider 9.5 hours short! Maybe you have had the benefit of no head wind or massive tail wind, but as VS seem to have taken to flying at 33,000ft for the last few flights this seems end up in the bumpy stuff.

BTW, for me I would pay £2200 for LHR-MCO-LHR as long as I got full LHR benefits

Paul

If anything has come out of the LGW UCS config, I generally agree that the J cabin is actually too small to meet demand on those routes, and this must represent some lost revenue for VS.

I wouldn't at all be surprised to see the LGW fleet switching to have a main deck UC cabin that is near identical to the LHR fleet (30/32J), retain PE upstairs, and have a slightly enlarged PE cabin on the main deck around and behind the galley (probably about half-size of the LHR config).

VS can sell the premium cabins successfully, and marketed properly they can deliver high yields, you only have to look at the new LHR 744 config to see this.

Mike

I am lead to believe that the reason for the small J cabin on the LGW fleet is because in the off seasons routes such as MCO are exceptionally hard to fill in all cabins. There is a clear lack of demand for the MCO route during say September. This is why we see flights being merged and canceled.

LAS and BGI seem to be in a class of their own ex LGW, I say this because there is demand for more J seats year round on this route. Hence VS moving BGI to LHR for a 3 month trial and constant rumours of LAS moving to LHR in the not too distant future.

As I posted earlier the questions for VS is this:

If they increase the J cabin can they be guaranteed to fill it everyday? On routes that are very seasonal I doubt this is the case.

If they increase the J cabin do they decrease the very popular W cabin. W seems to sell very well for VS ex LGW. It was mentioned that they may decrease the Y cabin to accommodate a larger J cabin but VS has to be careful, one of the reason why MCO can have 5 VS flights a day during the summer is because of the business that VH bring in. It is not going to look good if people book with VH and end up flying on First Choice!

I would imagine that in the current climate it will be much easier for VS to move LAS and BGI over to LHR (slot dependent) or move over a couple of LHR configured 744s for the BGI and LAS routes only rather than increase J and find that the plane is empty up the front for 8months of the year.

And for the record I am at a loss as to how anyone can call priority boarding at MCO a shambles. It is by far the best priority boarding I have seen at any VS station.

Originally posted by willd
And for the record I am at a loss as to how anyone can call priority boarding at MCO a shambles. It is by far the best priority boarding I have seen at any VS station.

Absolutely, in all my MCO flights I've never had a problem with priority boarding there. [y]

Have to say though re. the LGW cabin, I've flown May, June, early December, mid December and back end of December, and each time the UC and PE cabins have been full, yet economy not even half full. My 2 recent MCO flights were cancelled, both UC and PE were full on both flights, but economy had 200 passengers between the 2 flights (the economy number was confirmed to me by both check-in staff and cabin crew).

Originally posted by firsttimer

My 2 recent MCO flights were cancelled, both UC and PE were full on both flights, but economy had 200 passengers between the 2 flights (the economy number was confirmed to me by both check-in staff and cabin crew).

Exactly- so had the flights not been combined you would have only had 7 in each UC cabin. And in W only 27 seats would have been full. HArdly demand for an increase in cabin size is it. Y may well be low but your example goes to show that out of season there is little demand across all cabins on the MCO route.

Originally posted by willd

Originally posted by firsttimer

My 2 recent MCO flights were cancelled, both UC and PE were full on both flights, but economy had 200 passengers between the 2 flights (the economy number was confirmed to me by both check-in staff and cabin crew).

Exactly- so had the flights not been combined you would have only had 7 in each UC cabin. And in W only 27 seats would have been full. HArdly demand for an increase in cabin size is it. Y may well be low but your example goes to show that out of season there is little demand across all cabins on the MCO route.

Sorry, should have worded it to say both flights (VS27/28 and 15/16) had all 14 UC seats taken, and also the PE cabins were full, which meant 1 cabin load of PE passengers (from the cancelled plane) had to be downgraded to economy, and also 1 cabin load of UC passengers had to be downgraded to PE. Not everyone took the downgrade option and, according to Virgin sources, it took 2/3 days to clear (both LGW and MCO sides).