Vic, trying to match apples with apples, for a similar situation, how do change fees and rebooking regulations (i.e. carrier rules) compare between QFd and VAd?
I know a few people who've had to pay outrageous extra amounts in fares as they've changed close to departure date on QFd, but don't know anyone who regularly uses VAd and has to sometimes change their flights.
I only asked about the wine because Qantas used to be very limited in offering wine in economy, and I thought I read someone here recently say they got no wine.
I agree that I'm not seeing outrageous fare difference to change with Virgin, but Qantas changes to new fares does involve a big fare difference.
In terms of changing I find Virgin to be very easy, but can get hung up on the rules if trying to do things on line. Admittedly we're in special times at the moment with flexible change rules.
But I've had to change flights that were booked in business with Qantas. Given the late timeframe to change a pre-booked business fare, Qantas has offered +$6/$9 to move to flexi on the new flight or +$200 to $400 to move to business on the new flight. Seems to me in offering flexi economy they've waived the equal or higher fare class rule. Both times I've made this type of change - my upgrade request has cleared.
Virgin changes, the fares were all coming from business originally but cancelled into travel bank. The one difficulty is that it's my business flyer travel bank so normal call centre cannot deal with changes. I had to split a booking with 2 people on it, that was actually an economy fare, as I had separate business bookings for another two people.
No problem splitting the fare. I knew I'd have to cancel as the earlier virgin flight was gone. I could not cancel on line, I could change on line but they wanted an $80 fee as per the economy fare conditions. I had to ring then, and they cancelled and refunded to travel bank without question and without fee.
On the $80 fee thing, my understanding was the original fare conditions (business) would apply to any booking made with the travel bank money. But I did not have to argue the point, as the original VA flight had a 5 minute time change, and they just used that as a reason to say the flight was no longer acceptable. So I totally won.
I had a cancellation thing last year with Qantas, I tried to get that double status voucher thing, but the call centre person refused. I got a bit pushy because this was the flight where the second leg was moved to be 2 weeks before the first leg. Basically, Qantas messed that up. After a while, I was told "we can refund you due to schedule change". So it wasn't hard in the end, but it was hard to get there.
I booked Qatar to Europe for the recent board meeting because I required a fully refundable airfare (the rules for the board). Qatar covid allowance was full refund on any airfare. Qantas wanted like a $900 fee on a similar priced fare, (like +$2000), and Qantas was almost double for a fully refundable fare. Again in business.
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