tell me that these people are wrong!

I have just been on airlinequality.com and read reviews on their forum about Virgin Atlantic. I know many people that write on these review forums can be very misrable people who would moan about any thing. But there were a lot of complaints about virgin.
Please tell me that these people are wrong, that the toilets don't stink, that the drinks are served on a regualar basis and that the seats are not very uncomfortable. I paid to go with virgin to Barbados because of Virgin's reputation and am looking forward to the flight. I don't expect perfection and just hope that these comments are unrepresentive of Virgin Airlines.
See...http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/vir_atl.htm

Virgin Atlantic - by J Johnson
4 January 2007

Manchester-Barbados return, Premium Economy outbound, Economy inbound. Having never travelled with this airline before I was expecting good things as I'd always thought Virgin were supposed to be a good airline. My opinion has changed, and I don't know how they have achieved a 4 star status - they are very mediocre. The seats in economy are dreadful and very uncomfortable, with those in Premium not much better, the head- rests in Premium push your head forward and give you a terrible sore neck. The food was poor and I expected much better - as bad in Premium as in standard economy. Cabin crew poor, in Premium on the outbound my sister asked the stewardess if she could have a glass of water - 15 minutes passed, and this request had still not been met, so she had to go to the galley to ask another member of staff. On the return journey the lights are dimmed and the cabin crew just disappear for hours - they didn't come round with glasses of water, again we had to visit the galley. How anybody can sleep in economy in those cramped seats is beyond me, but they should realise that not everybody will be sleeping and some people may require some refreshment, particularly water. The toilets in Premium Economy on the outbound were disgusting, with an overwhelming stench of urine - I didn't observe one member of the cabin staff ever going into the toilet to clean or spray with some air freshener. On the return, films advertised in the seat back magazine were not those actually showing, so we didn't know what was playing on which channel - as they don't have the facility to stop & start movies yourself by the time you had figured out what was on which channel the movie had already began. Overall, I wouldn't want to use Virgin again - after travelling economy with Singapore Airlines the difference in the whole experience is vast.

{Edited by Bazz to display quote}

[Bazz]

Stephen, some people will have bad experiences on VS, as on any other airline. Things can and do go wrong, staff, the same as pax, can have off days. On balance we discount the vast majority of bad press on that site as it frequently seems to be engaged in by people who enjoy Virgin bashing.

People are more likely to post a review if they had a bad time than enjoyed themselfs.

[Neil]

I imagine you will find that on the majority of review sites (and especially airline quality) a lot of people only post when things go wrong/they experience a bad flight. The beauty of a site like V-Flyer is that while most of the people who use it are fans of the Virgin brand they are very honest about the flights and give both positive and negative reviews/feedback in the knowledge they won't over exaggerate the incidents like on these other sites.

Of course, not everyone is going to be happy all the time and individual expectations are more often then not the course for a bad experience, but on the whole VS offer a very good level of service, although as Bazz has said, sometimes the CC/VS Staff do have an off day. I wouldn't worry about a few negative reviews from another site and I am sure you will have a fab flight[y]

Neil

[Scrooge]

A couple of years ago when I first joined this site one of the first questions I raised was pretty much the same as yours.Over time I have come to understand that certain websites (not pointing any fingers) just love to bash the hell out of certain airlines.

I sent in two reviews a while back, one for Maxjet and one for Virgin,both of them giving positive reviews.The one for maxjet was published, the one for Virgin was not, at that point any and all creditability for that website went out the window with me.

As Bazz says there will be good flights and there will be bad, chances are you will have a good flight.

Take a look at the trip reports on here, you will see that there are not only reports with glowing praise, but also reports that show that things can go wrong.

To answer one of your questions.

Last year I took 3 round trip flights on VS, one in UC and two in Y.To be honest I was not looking foward to the flights in Y, but I was pleasantly surprised.Yes it would be nice is there was more seat pitch, but that can be said for most airlines.The seats were fine, in fact after 11 hrs in one of those seats I had no problems, after two hrs stuck in a Taca seat I was in pain, go figure.

There are a few valid points in the quoted airlinequality.com entry above.

* IFE - on a LGW/MAN aircraft it will not be an AVOD system, so you cannot stop and start the entertainment. I have flown back from the MCO on the 5th of a month & the previous months IFE offering was still on the system - despite the new months in-flight magazine (with new films in) being in the seat-back pockets.

* Seat pitch - 31 inches in Economy. Even some of the charter airlines are now beating VS (& BA) on Economy seat pitch.

With regard to the service issues - there is no excuse for not making regular water / juice runs through the cabin - even VS's inflight health guide says to drink lots of water. What I can say is that a friend did a [daytime] MAN-MCO flight last year & all they got offered drink-wise was one pre-lunch drink, one drink with lunch and one water / juice run. If you wanted anything else, you had to go to the galley and ask for it / press the call button - which is not brilliant for a 9hr flight.

One person's single experience isn't necessarily representative of the whole brand, as you'll see from the trip reviews here on V-Flyer. Specifically I've done the ex LGW version of that flight and other Carribean flights a number of times and have enjoyed them all. Yes, I'd like AVOD and yes I'd like more seat pitch in Y but I still keep coming back for more.

I take all reviews with a healthy pinch of salt. We booked a hotel in St Lucia last year; all the Tripadvisor reviews said how excellent the hotel was save for the first review, which slammed it big style. We mentioned this to the manager and his comment was "nothing we could do pleased those two".

Paul

As many people have mentioned, I find that website rather negative, and like scrooge, sent 2 reviews and only one was posted. The thing I love about this website is it gives you a very honest view of VS and people's experiences. Read some of the Trip Reports, and I am sure you will have a great flight.
[y]
Dominic

[ChuckC]

stephen,
Welcome to V-Flyer and I hope the site becomes your favorite!

Without repeating what's already been said I will add that every flight on any airline carries a crew, upon whose experience and attitude the passengers rely -- sometimes with less than favorable results.

Also, as you will see around here V-Flyer is an independent forum. We "call 'em like we see 'em" and that means that if a VS flight disappoints we encourage that discussion as much as hearing about perfect trips.

Chuck-

Every airline will get a lot of negative reviews, either on V-Flyer, Skytrax etc. What you must remember is that for every negative complaint there could be 1,000 happy customers and, as G-VFLY has stated, people are more likely to talk about the bad things and make it public rather than the good points.

Out of interest what is the general feeling of VS service over on a.net?

Originally posted by ChuckC
Also, as you will see around here V-Flyer is an independent forum. We "call 'em like we see 'em" and that means that if a VS flight disappoints we encourage that discussion as much as hearing about perfect trips.

That's exactly why I joined

If you do a search for airline reviews youl find other sites with more good than bad VS reviews posted, think that site loves to bash VS. As for the service there are a few crew that let us down, but that is being adressed just now! having said that on a full gatwick flight doing more than one or two oj& water rounds is near impossible sometimes! outbound its so busy with requests for drinks from galleys - people queueing up for alcohol and when you do go into the cabin it can take the best part of an hour to do one oj& water round. Inbound dutyfree can take hours so although it looks like weve dissapeared we are actually just somewhere in economy selling so if your sitting at the front section of Y this is why you might not see us for a long part of the flight. Not making excuses but dispite the long flight times we dont stop on many flights. Yeh crew do have breaks just like any other job it annoys me when people expect us to do a 10-14 hour day without a break - we dont need to go to bed but there is nowhere else away from pax to go!

To raise a few of the points, we have had the wrong magazine or correct magazine/wrong movies on 3 flights recently, so I believe the reviewer. We've also had the wrong menus. However, we continue to fly VA because apart from those (IMO) small faults, they are still one of the best. We simply pointed out the film error, we were told the correct listings and the films were restarted once we were all 'in the know'. We've never had an issue with toilet cleaning, it was definitely done during our flights because someone very kindly blocked one at one point. It was sorted the next time I went.

We always fly PE and there is always water/orange juice on a tray at the back of PE so people can help themselves. In addition to that, there is a fruit bowl now too.

We have 6 flights with them booked for this year and I look forward to each one. Roll on Saturday!!

Where is the proof that airlinequality is a VS bashing site. That is just BS. I too have posted reviews on there, some show up some don't. I posted a great review about Maxjet,and it never appeared, but I don't start crying that they must hate them. As for people mostly posting on boards if they have a bad experience, I don't agree. have a look at the reviews on EOS, Silverjet, and yes, my favorite Maxjet, you will see almost all are positive,(well, except Maxjet). People tend to post if their experience is eventful, either bad or good, if it's just an OK flight, then they tend not to. When did you last read a review that said "flight was OK". I think a lot people are really pissed with VS now, the OP fell into the trap of buying into the image, and image that has been tarnished very badly. Even on here most of the posts are of disapointments, now that has to be ringing alarm bells if a site dedicated to people that love all things VS spend most of the time calling them.

[Scrooge]

My point is that I take this site and others as a far more credible source of reviews than I do skytrax.

You are of course correct, people are far more likely to complain about a bad flight than they are to post a review saying it was an ok flight, nothing went wrong.

Reading through the TR's on here they are generally positive, but they also have some negatives, hence unbiased.

[Decker]

Checkout http://www.v-flyer.com/charts.asp Stoneman... things aren't as bad as you make out.

Decker, this is part of my point. For a site that is by definition biased towards VS you would expect those figures to be a lot better.
My other point was just to say that it's a bit churlish to say that just because a particular site has a lot of bad reviews about VS that they must be anti-VS, MAYBE they just get a lot of bad reviews, or it could be that because there are loads of people that fly VS, they get lots of feedback.

[Decker]

Well we DO like to think we're independant . We're not going to post fibbing reviews just 'cos we like VS... But interesting point re: "churlish". Some people have come to the "bias" conclusion because of having posted multiple positive reviews and having none published. I personally have no experience of said sites and so would refrain from commenting.

I on the whole have found the "onboard" experience satisfactory
to exellent. The cabin crew on the whole very good. When things have gone pear shaped the crew have dealt with things kindly and professionally.

Dealing with people on the ground can be a different matter, but thats a long long story and the balls are still up in the air, lol.