i have to admit I am starting to get really sick and tired of the rubbish being spread about Virgin on these threads in the past week or so. Really and truly, this is just personality coming through there is NO substance to these negative hype it's really sad.
I've taken my third business class flight today (in 4 days with another 4 planned this week) with VA BNE-MEL and i cant speak highly enough of VA and the product. I speak from massive experience NOT only on VA but airlines in general. Here's a quick synopsis..
(VA Platinum about 5+ times over i.e 4000+ status points, QF WP - ex chairmans club, Air NZ GE, SQ PPS and numerous other private clubs etc). I only fly Business anywhere in the world and domestically and do domestically 4-10 flights a week! Thats enough to explain that YES i fly alot and i am a high priority customer for VA.
In business everyone has glitches! VA have released a new product that has needed to be tweaked. But the MASS hype shown on this forum is just crazy and completely unwarranted!. I flew VA PE for many years and many times i got rouge aircraft, and was always looked after when it was stuffed up. To say that business passengers would run the other way just because of a different seat is just plain wrong! Personally i've found that these people complaining maybe fly business once in a while and are upset. Now this doesn't mean that VA shouldn't fix the problem, but really it has to be put into context!
I rang and spoke to some people i know very very high up in VA about the comments on this forum last week and was scared that VA had seriously busted everything based on comments on the thread. Thats simply not the case! The product is fantastic, i find the food easily on par with Air NZ business (lamb the other day was great), i think the wine maybe could be better. But other then that, the product is good.
I think for those complaining, we need to really ask the question? How often do you really fly business? Are you the people VA is trying to put into those seats (i.e not just a once a year business flyer or upgrade) but actually someone spending big $$ on the seats. I get the feeling and that 98% of people on this forum are platinum and good flyers, but not people that VA is trying to put into Business, but just adhoc business flyers. VA are trying to attract people like me, that is willing to part with 3K a week in travel expenditure!
The VA product is not perfect, but it's certainly a good product. I paid $800 for my seat today, i could have got on a Qantas plane and flown the same trip for $1000 (which i did about 3 weeks ago) and the VA product, (staff, seat, food) is far superior to Qantas, even if i was on an old 737-700 it would be on par, and i would get a credit from VA! I think if people actually flew regularly on these Business routes, you couldn't make these comments people are making, its because you've spent alot extra then you normally would to try the product and you had a problem. In this case, you should be fixed, but the negative hype is completely uncalled for!
Speaking as an authoritative source the product is NOT broken, the changes now forced by dropping the 737-700 seat issue is rubbish, yes they want to avoid putting people into the old seats, but now forcing VA to drop these flights has caused other normal business class flyers pain, just because people here whom fly business maybe 2-5% of the time have complained. Personally and i spoke to 4 other business class flyers today, all of us if received the wrong seating would have simply asked/received a credit for the change and none of us would have thought anything other and been happy. The world is NOT falling to pieces just because my seat is actually 8cm narrower!
Please if you are going to post such negative comments about a good product, please please, show that you actually can comment, I.E state, how much you paid for the tickets (not upgrades), how often you fly business, and why it's broken. I know for a fact, that the product is not bad, and VA are great at listening, sometimes i think though they listen to much to this forum as really public forums can be a bad place, i.e it's easy to have a loud voice on this forum..
I like reading this forum, however the negative bashing should stop, and i believe the mods should step in. Otherwise i think this forum is going to loose a number of good people.
Sorry for the long post, but seriously some people need to grow up. It's not that bad, VA is looking after people, put some positive criticism or nothing!