VS027 24/06/06

Hi,
I often check the departure times of various VA flights and I noticed yesterday that the VS027 left at 13:55 2hrs and 20mins late. On the same day the VS015 left at 12:34 just four minutes late. The departure times were estimated early yesterday morning so I assume VA were aware of a problem then. My question is why didn't they use the 15 aircraft for the 28 so the delay for the 28 wasn't so long ?
Please excuse my ignorance if there is a perfectly obvious reason...[:I]

[preiffer]

Simple - why delay two flights when you only have to delay one?

The turn-around time for a flight may have meant that the "replacement" for the 15 would have taken longer to get ready than its original departure time.

If you've already got one late flight (with annoyed passengers), why compound the problem by using another aircreaft, forcing another flight to be late also?

A 2hr 20 minute delay to a flight certainly does not mean VS were aware of it happening before the flights scheduled departure time.

There are many reasons why a delay could have suddenly occured and believe me it is far easier operationally to have passengers wait an extra couple of hours for one aircraft than have all the hassle of moving people and paper work from pillar to post.

Also, when they discovered the delay the second aircraft you are suggesting it could have been swapped with may not have been ready at the time.

When VS do aircraft swaps, i've only seen it done for flights that have a good four five hours in between.

Like the above poster said, why delay two flights when you can also only delay one?

We had a similar experience on our outbound trip to MCO earlier this month. Checked in, and by the time we got to the departure lounger, found that our flight (VS027) had a 90 minute delay on it, and the VS015 was on time. It ended up that VS015 boarded, and as soon as that had finished, they started boarding the 27 [:(] Which of course meant that our earlier flight got in to MCO after the later flight. I agree with what has been said though, I can see why they'd only want to delay one flight, rather than potentially delaying both by moving passengers from one to the other. It sounds simple enough, but I can imagine it would involve a lot of paper work for Virgin to change aircraft from one flight to the other.

Hi,
Thanks for the replies. I can see where your coming from. I did actually check the estimated time of depature early that morning and it was showing the delay then. I was working on the purely personal opinion (and experience) that an hour or so delay is in reality "on time" so by changing aircraft you inconvenience all passengers equally. I guess in the world of air travel it's not quite as simple as just swapping the ingnition keys...

Mick