I had to go PER-MEL towards the end of OCT. Price wasn't cheap even in Y.
This was my first flight for a long long time and previously I had status - so this was the first time I'd been faced with the horrid kiosks. I was very early at PER and looked over the sea of sad little vertical sticks with no-one negotiating them. This put me into a foul mood straight up, but not for long as I found a couple of service people hiding behind a big wall/barrier and they checked me in, in the time honoured fashion, so, great!
Had a few digital lounge passes, one expiring on the same day, so wandered off to the lounge.
PER lounge is pretty large and there couldn't have been more than a dozen pax inside, felt pretty deserted. Food offerings pathetic, though the coconut cream curry soup was delicious. The staff were good though and they looked after me.
Given the lack of people in the lounge I thought it might be a light flight - nope - packed. No space in the overheads so I had to put my bag at my feet. Seat felt like the cushioning had collapsed. It was a bearable 3.5hr flight to MEL, but only just ... thats domestic Y for you.
For once the baggage handlers and carousel operators at MEL seemed to have themselves in order - my usual experience coming into MEL is that they don't display the incoming PER flight on the boards so no-one ever knows which carousel to use - this turns into a big revolving mob of people slowing circulating from 1 through 3 and back again until you see you bag on the belt. This time though the flight was displayed and the bags came relatively quickly.
Got an email when I arrived in MEL from VA asking if I'd like to upgrade the flight I'd just taken to J (bit late guys!)
Anyway, this is a long preamble to deciding that 3.5hrs on a worn out 737 in Y was pretty horrid and I started looking for opportunities to upgrade my seat on the return to PER in a weeks time as the anticipated flight time MEL-PER is usually around 4.5 hrs.
I made the lowest possible offer, I think it was $280 and the next day received confirmation of acceptance.
I had a pleasant checkin experience at MEL, waltzed through security and on to the lounge. MEL lounge is always a better proposition than PER and so it was this time. Packed to the gills, but at least they had some warm food ... pretty uninspiring as is usual, but 500% better than PER's lack of interest.
Boarding was a zoo. There were two clearly marked lanes, standard and priority, but there was initially no gate staff at the standard lane and I'm pretty sure as a result everyone moved across to the priority lane. Boarding was slow and tedious despite shuffling half the pax to the rear door via the stairs.
I'd scored row 1 in J so was pretty happy about that. Overhead storage this time. But geez. 737 J was never very special and the offering now hasn't exactly got better with time and new ownership.
- Seat hard and super uncomfortable as J has always been for VA in these birds
- No pillow or blanket
- No USB or power of any type for your device
- No tablet to watch the wifi based entertainment. I wouldn't have cared so much but a lack of USB power meant that an already flat mobile phone didn't last more than a couple of minutes into watching something
- No amenity kit, not that it matters, theres no fooling anyone with this 'J' product offering ... its a rather poor Y+ at best.
- Food was good, though uninspired.
- Theres no menu, so the attendant has to state and re-state the menu options to everyone - and the 737 is a noisy beast so I observed the poor attendant having to go over this again and again, not only with me.
- Drinks are ok, but again, no menu, so when you're asked what you want to drink you have to ask what they have loaded and then ask again because - well - its hard to hear.
It was an evening flight so after dinner service all my neighbours tried to settle in and the lights were dimmed - and there started the great squirm. These seats are a lot bigger than in Y, for sure, but massively uncomfortable. Everyone is squirming about and scrunching themselves up into balls with varying levels of success. There is virtually no recline in either Y or J.
Frankly, it was a shocking flight and I won't be doing that again.
Its certainly true that nothing much has changed in the last few years, those things that have changed are worse. I stopped flying 737 J a long time before VA1 collapsed and used to carefully choose the transcon A330's which were a much _much_ better proposition, even in Y. THose are gone now, presumably forever on VA.
QF is still flying 330's transcon now and then. Have to be careful and theres always the possibility of them changing the plane on you, but at least there is some hope, with careful planning. A lot more expensive in $$ on the QF metal of course but if you do manage to score the 330 then its worthwhile.
www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au
This is most of the reason I threw in my lot with VA1. Domestically, the A330 transcons were perfect. The points or $$$ cost for a J seat wasn't ever cheap but presented as a realistic option to Y.
