Worst Queue !!!!!!! part two

I would just add that I am currently in Orlando and VA have e mailed me to ask if I would like to leave on an earlier flight with the possible problems from hurrican Ivan. I am impressed that they are contacting me in this way to overcome any problem that Ivan may give - hopefully its path will not pass through Orlando.

It seems to me that VA flight ops were really on the ball, and by the look of it had to make some tough decisions to release enough aircraft from their schedule to operate the recovery flights.

The forward planning by VS seems to have been improving with practice (with each hit of severe weather!) - like offering Eurohill an earlier flight, to try and make a early dent in an possible mop-up operations.

Flying on any sort of trip during irregular operations is often difficult or has a feeling of being chaotic. Even if the recovery flights were more spread-out across the day, chances are the airport would be hellishly busy, as people would just turn up early anyway, or already be staying at the airport.

While not being a VA "apologist", it sounds like they did a fairly good job of getting people back quickly, but any constructive criticism you have should be given to VA, in case it helps them prepare for similar events in the future.

Cheers,
Mike

Dan,
Whilst I can appreciate waiting for hrs to checkin (esp with children) isn't anyones idea of fun, the circumstances were not typical.

I fly a lot mostly on VS (but other carriers too)

I know a great many people in FL too, I think the fact VS offered a reduced relief flight at all tells you Virgin is a good airline, operating under extraordinary conditions.

I'd take stock of that and maybe try them again when all is status quo?

BTW how was the O/W flight?

quote:Originally posted by eurohill
I would just add that I am currently in Orlando and VA have e mailed me to ask if I would like to leave on an earlier flight with the possible problems from hurrican Ivan. I am impressed that they are contacting me in this way to overcome any problem that Ivan may give - hopefully its path will not pass through Orlando.

I think it's good that VS have emailed you proactively (though I try *not* to check my email when I'm on holiday - happens rarely these days though ).

According to one of my friends in Lake Mary (about 30-35 miles North of Orlando), they're expecting Ivan to be around tomorrow (Tuesday). Still, she's looking on the bright side - she knows that Ivan can't knock her power out, since after Frances, the power company told her that they couldn't restore power to her until Thursday anyway!

Cheers

Michael

I can understand why the catering was not on the flight from gatwick.
In any form of buisness, you have in production terms, a set production capacity, based upon normal demands. If and on a weekend, the airline says "instead of the 2,000 meals we want prepared, we want 9,000 meals for sunday departure" it is impossible to do. Don't forget, most meals for all airlines are produced by only a couple of catering firms. The other airlines would not be happy for their passengers to miss out on the normal flights, plus the quntities of materials required would not be available at such short notice, particulary in foodstufs which degrade.

Secondly, why on earth would they mess around putting duty free on the aircraft with low staff levels and rushing to get tyhe aircraft out there? I still connt belive you are complaining because you could not buy your fags on the way home!

From other forums, ALL airlines either running out of MCO or Sanford had major check in problems and delyas, even having to stop off at Bangor to refuel as there was not enough available in Florida!

Would you have perhps preferred to wait until the situation was back to normal, say two to thgree weeks before getting a flight home?

Virgin like all airlines is in these situations i.e. acts of God only responsible for getting you home at some time, they don't even have to pay your extra expenses, that is why you have holiday insurance.

Of course Virgin are a buisness, what else do you expect them to be? But as said abouve, if they wanted to take a "buisness" attitude, they could have made you wait.

As I understand it (please if someone knows, please tell us) the flights were filled as the passengers checked in?

I am not a member of Virgin in any way (apert from being a member of the frequent fliers club, as I am with BA, American, Continental and United) but I think they pulled all the stops out to get you home.

As for delys, My travel to belfast, scheduled to be in at 5:40am, arrived 19:00 11th Sept, My travel to Man 10th Sept scheduled to be in 5am, actual arrival 21:00,

this is a part of a post from another forum (I take it it is OK to post it? if not Mods please remove)

Quote:- "We returned home yesterday (Thursday) afternoon after our extended stay due to hurricane Frances. Sanford airport was bedlam on Wednesday due to the volume of flights leaving the airport.

I've got to say it was the most unpleasant airport check-in experience I've ever had. Some of the highlights included:

The four hour+ queue before we checked in.

There was no information passed between the reps and the check-in desk staff. They appeared overwhelmed.

The arguments at the check-in desks by irate passengers - it was like 'Airport' on the BBC.

The planes people were assigned for the flights home. People didn't fly out on the planes they flew in on (we were on 'rescue planes' as one rep called it) and were upset at the fact. Some MyTravel passengers expected an Airbus for the flight home to Manchester and didn't like the idea of flying on a Tristar. TCD passengers who had SF and SU upper seats had no guarantee of getting similar seats on their flight back due to different planes. Our flight to Manchester was on an Air Atlanta white jumbo (TF-ARO) with a different seating configuration (and no inflight entertainment) than a TCD branded jumbo and one of the TCD jumbo flights to Gatwick was split in to two flights on smaller planes (757's I think) by ATA - which resulted in 30 or so people not getting a seat home.

When we boarded our plane and the doors were closed it was announced to the passengers that all flights out of Sanford including ours would be stopping at Bangor, Maine to refuel as Orlando didn't have enough aviation fuel" end Quote

If the queing was so bad (as it seems for all airlines) why did you not go back to a hotel, contact Virgin and get on the next days aircraft?

I do not understand the flight crew checking in situation. I was not aware they did so at check in desks? can a Virgin staffer explain this to me?

Wow this is quite an interesting thread.

To Dan,

Firstly I can understand your frustrations, it must have been a dreadful time to be in Florida and I fully appreciate that the check in and flight would have been far from satisfactory. However as others have previously said this was an abnormal circumstance completely.

I am cabin crew for Virgin Atlantic yet was introduced to this site by one of the moderators who is definitely not staff. Whilst being loyal to the company, the reason I read this site and contribute to it is because it keeps me in touch with passengers opinions and enables me to improve my standards wherever possible. Yes this site is from people who are loyal to Virgin but they are also honest members who give honest, constructive and accurate feedback.

I have been crew now for 8 years for Virgin and in all this time have never seen hurricanes on this level that have lead to so much disruption. Whilst Virgin does have emergency plans in place, I am sure that they had not envisaged it being quite as devastating as it turned out to be. Under the circumstances I think we have done exceptionally well, as far as I am aware all passengers are home now.

Our crewing department were working exceedingly hard, having to cancel flights and send extra crew out, the impact of this is probably still causing disruptions to rosters but everybody was focused on getting the passengers back. Yes we run a business but we are a very customer focused airline and please believe that all these efforts were made not just to save some bad press.

The operation of sending a flight out is huge, until I worked for Virgin I didn't realise quite how many links there were in the chain. Catering is just one of these links. The catering department at Gatwick are also fantastic but they too would have been stretched too far. The caterers were probably contracted to other airlines flying relief flights to Florida as well. Imagine the demand when four airlines suddenly decide within 24 hours they are doubling their schedules.

The cabin crew always check in at the same place in Orlando, it has always been this way and in all other airports globally. It takes approx 5 mins to check in a whole crew as no seat assignments need to be made, security questions asked etc. I apologise if this added to your frustration but the crew need to get on the aircraft, do safety and security checks prior to passenger boarding. This is a regulation, not a Virgin rule and I would defy you to find another airline that does not follow this procedure.

Dan I hope you have not been disuaded from posting on this site again, your opinions are valued and welcomed, however I have to echo the opinions of all that have posted on this topic before me.

I hope you have not been put of flying with Virgin Atlantic again, as you say you love Florida so maybe you can see how we operate under situation normal!

Best Wishes

At all airports other than London the crew get dropped off outside the terminal and then walk to check in, here bagage tags are already printed for each crew member all we have to do is tell the check in agent our name, place the tag on our bag and off we go to prepare the aircraft.

At security we always bypass the long lines and skip to the front of the q, Imagine if your flight was delayed because the crew were stuck in the secuirty line with no seperate passengers.

Imagine if the crew had to line up at check in with the passengers for 3 hours!!!

At all the airports an empty desk is used for us to go too and normally a spare person will assist us.

Hi Dan

I work in VS Ops and was on shift over the weekend of Hurricane Frances so here's a view from the Ops perspective. On Thursday the US authorities notified everyone that they would be closing MCO airport on Fri/Sat/Sun in order to give the staff the chance to protect their properties (as best they could) and/or to evacuate until it was safe to return. VS had 12 747 flights scheduled from MCO to the UK on those days, all of whom would need to be flown back sooner or later. The authorities decision to close the airport was made mainly due to the devastation caused by Hurricane Charley only a couple of weeks previously.

As things transpired, Frances slowed down a little and was over MCO for longer than the forecasts had suggested, so they decided to keep the airport closed on Monday as well (that's another 2 747s worth of passengers that we had to move! [:(]) We couldn't go firm on a plan to send rescue flights until the authorities had declared that the airport was open and that everything was working and the staff were back in place, so it was Tuesday before we could launch any flights.

It costs at least $1M per month to lease a 747, so an airline of VS's size can't afford to have them sitting around doing nothing waiting for a bit of disruption. Therefore all the extra flights to bring people back from Florida had to be squeezed into the normal flying programme, which meant lots of combined flights, delays and cancellations. An additional problem with planning extra longhaul flights is that you need a crew at the destination in order to bring the aircraft back. Therefore crews had to be flown out to the east coast over the weekend and positioned to MCO when it was safe to do so.

Apologies for the lack of duty-free's etc but our priority was to get people back to the UK, and we got the vast majority away on the Tue or Wed following the re-opening of the airport. Everyone at VS and our service companies (handling agents, caterers, etc) was under a lot of pressure and worked extremely hard to get these flights away, so some things (like not having any butter for your roll [:0]) may have been overlooked.

I know that flying longhaul with kids is an ordeal at the best of times, but I hope you will appreciate that these were exceptional circumstances and give VS another go in the future. [8D]

Cheers
Alan

Hi Dan

Fair play for coming back and re emailing the orginal post.


B

It isn't the original post. It's an attempt to justify it.

yea thats what i meant!

really

When checking in at Orlando today, I asked the staff how that day went - the reply was that they hope it never ever happens again! It took them 7 1/2 hours to check in everyone onto the flights. Their advise for anyone that complains about the wait is to travel BA next time, as they had no queues at their check in.

The reason being that all the passenage on their cancelled flights were told its their problem and they would have to find themselves new flights for their return! Again VA have also been helping this paxs return home.