On my recent trip to London, I flew Virgin Atlantic. In the following open letter to Virgin Atlantic, I describe my experiences, some good, some not so good.
OPEN LETTER TO VIRGIN ATLANTIC
Dear Virgin Atlantic:
It is indeed a pleasant surprise to receive an email in response to my feedback — I never expected one! Besides, the content of your email makes it very obvious that it isn’t one of those auto-generated emails which use boilerplate text, and politely inform you not to bother replying because they are from so-called “Do-Not-Reply@xyz.com” sort of email addresses.
Only for this gesture, I agree to your request of not judging Virgin Atlantic “… purely on this …” experience, and take you up on your offer to “give us a chance to show you a more typical Virgin Atlantic experience”!
Let me now comment on some of the specifics:
1. I haven’t been charged yet for the said text / SMS. If I am in future, I have made a note of the address to which I should mail the credit card statement so that I can get a refund.
2. While I got a message onboard that my message sending had failed, actually the recipient on the ground landed up getting my text message … not once, not twice, but around 33 times over the next 24 hours! Having disclosed this, I hope I don’t now get charged 33 times!!
3. My feedback regarding the toilet was not that it was dirty — but that the faucet / wash basin was choked because the water hadn’t drained away. The cabin staff to whom I’d reported this soon after getting out of the toilet (a different person from the one who collected my feedback very courteously) just shrugged and said, “Yeah, we know, it takes a long time for the water to drain off”. Having flown with many airlines in the US, Europe and Asia over the last 20 years, I have rarely experienced such a thing, and I could only sympathize with the cabin staff’s ignorance / apathy / attempt to BS me.
4. As regards the ability to manually override the mechanical problem with my seat, your cabin staff was clearly oblivious to this feature. Instead, what I heard was, “Yeah, we have known this, our Engineering hasn’t been able to find the time to attend to this”. I’d hoped at the time that Virgin Atlantic’s Engineering does find the time to attend to more serious mechanical faults viz. wheels not coming out during landing, etc. etc.
5. On my return trip, I found that the dinner service was significantly delayed. The flight departure time was 2145. Even though there was an announcement by the cabin staff around 30 minutes into the flight that dinner would be served in the next half-hour, we actually got served as late as midnight. I don’t know if this is the norm in Virgin Atlantic flights, but you might want to review this process. In my experience, most airlines serve lunch / dinner around 1-1.5 hours into the flight. Two and a quarter hours is just too late.
6. Having said the above, it’s not as though I found everything about the trip unpleasant. Here are some good features and they can get even better with slight improvements:
(a) I love San Pellegrino sparkling water and Virgin Atlantic is the only airline I know that serves it. Even Alitalia, the flagship carrier of Italy, the country of origin of San Pellegrino, doesn’t. I very much appreciate this. Keep it up, Virgin Atlantic!
(b) A bar that was open throughout the flight (even if I don’t imbibe alcohol). But, it would help if there was an onboard announcement that such a bar exists and is open to all Business Class passengers. I happened to spot it purely by chance and had thought that it was perhaps open only for First Class passengers (given that the bar was located on the other side of the galley from the Business Class). Only when I inquired with one of the cabin staff, did I learn that the bar is indeed open to Business Class passengers and that, Virgin Atlantic doesn’t even have a First Class.
(c) For all my comments about the cabin staff, I must say that they appeared bright and attentive throughout the flight. Which is not something I’d say about too many other airlines in my experience. I won’t name names, but I have flown in European airlines where the cabin staff doesn’t even keep on their full uniforms throughout the flight — their jacket comes off quite fast — and generally appear shoddy / fatigued / inattentive after a few hours into the flight.
(d) Even in the late ‘nineties, I have come across SkyPhones (on Singapore Airlines flights) which allow you to make telephone calls to Mother Earth. I even remember making a call successfully from onboard a Singapore Airlines flight from Bangkok to Singapore in 1999. Not having encountered a similar telephone facility on any other airline since that flight, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Virgin Atlantic offered not just a telephone but also an SMS texting service. And, at around half the price of the telephone call (2.5 US$ per message as against 4.5 US$ per minute), the texting service can be a cost-effective and useful feature — if only it worked properly! Also, while in the middle of keying in the message, it was very annoying to see the screen blanking out without any warning. I found out later that this happened because of an inflight announcement that overrode the texting function. It would be useful to display a message that the texting function would be restored when the inflight announcement ended.
Hope you find my feedback useful.
Thanks and Regards.
KETHARAMAN SWAMINATHAN