The damaged plane at Cape Town (due to a passenger walkway collapsing) was not the beginning to the current mess where passengers are still stranded following the cancellation of the VS604 flight on Saturday 5th April.
It seems that originally Virgin had planned to operate the A340-600 for a further 3 weeks past the October-March season, thus extending passenger capacity into April as the smaller A340-300 is normally used. Unfortunately when this decision was reversed in November no-one made the necessary amendments to availability on bookings.
Consequently the day before the scheduled flight passengers were told the flight was oversold and they would be shunted to Jo'berg connections or held up until April 8th.
When the A340-300 turned up and was damaged all those passengers who had fought to keep their seats on the original aircraft were given less than 6 hours notice of the cancellation.
To add flames to the fire Virgin staff had shut the desk inside the terminal and airport staff had to handle enquiries until the crowd got so bad ticketing staff were brought down to talk to passengers. And all on a weekend when the customer relations office was closed. Skeleton staff had to repeatedly put customers on hold while they referred to supervisers for advice.
The closely guarded excellent customer service for which Virgin has rightly been so proud looks like it has been eroded pretty badly.
I'm a passionate Virgin flyer (with a girlfriend in the US) and have argued with older members of my family who prefer BA over the airline. Sadly they are all on this trip and now think Virgin are awful.
It's a real shame and we are still stuck here with no Virgin representatives to be seen or heard in person, by SMS or email.
We're supposed to back at work tomorrow... heeelp!
It seems that originally Virgin had planned to operate the A340-600 for a further 3 weeks past the October-March season, thus extending passenger capacity into April as the smaller A340-300 is normally used. Unfortunately when this decision was reversed in November no-one made the necessary amendments to availability on bookings.
Consequently the day before the scheduled flight passengers were told the flight was oversold and they would be shunted to Jo'berg connections or held up until April 8th.
When the A340-300 turned up and was damaged all those passengers who had fought to keep their seats on the original aircraft were given less than 6 hours notice of the cancellation.
To add flames to the fire Virgin staff had shut the desk inside the terminal and airport staff had to handle enquiries until the crowd got so bad ticketing staff were brought down to talk to passengers. And all on a weekend when the customer relations office was closed. Skeleton staff had to repeatedly put customers on hold while they referred to supervisers for advice.
The closely guarded excellent customer service for which Virgin has rightly been so proud looks like it has been eroded pretty badly.
I'm a passionate Virgin flyer (with a girlfriend in the US) and have argued with older members of my family who prefer BA over the airline. Sadly they are all on this trip and now think Virgin are awful.
It's a real shame and we are still stuck here with no Virgin representatives to be seen or heard in person, by SMS or email.
We're supposed to back at work tomorrow... heeelp!
