VA withdraws all services from Hong Kong

[Must...Fly!]

It would be really interesting to see some reviews of the SYD-LAX-LHR route once travel begins. It's not what one would first think of as the best way to get to London but I'm quite curious

 

[bcworld]

It would be really interesting to see some reviews of the SYD-LAX-LHR route once travel begins. It's not what one would first think of as the best way to get to London but I'm quite curious

Well...the main issue is of course the requirement to clear customs at the transit point. Although, on current timings, won't the connection at LAX be 9-10 hours? I'm thinking of a VA>VS connection.

 

[magicpies]

I had my partner booked on SYD-HKG J award seat in June, called them up last night and the lady I spoke with had no idea about the withdrawal of flights! After a few minutes on hold they could only offer me a refund. Rebooked now QF.

 

[p--and--t]

I had my partner booked on SYD-HKG J award seat in June, called them up last night and the lady I spoke with had no idea about the withdrawal of flights! After a few minutes on hold they could only offer me a refund. Rebooked now QF.

Wow that's great customer experience (sarcastic) from both points.

Not knowing about their own public announcements and secondly not offering any accommodation other than here's your money go elsewhere.

 

[hutch]

Wow that's great customer experience (sarcastic) from both points.

Not knowing about their own public announcements and secondly not offering any accommodation other than here's your money go elsewhere.

Yes it is terrible. They have options they could provide and seem to lazy to offer it.

Leaves a poor taste.

I won't say I'll never fly with them again, because I will. But they won't be my first choice and my next credit card will be back with QF

 

[hutch]

Yes it is terrible. They have options they could provide and seem to lazy to offer it.

Leaves a poor taste.

I won't say I'll never fly with them again, because I will. But they won't be my first choice and my next credit card will be back with QF

Just called them, and they could only do a refund. Couldn't even transfer me to Singapore... they would have to cancel and then rebook. There's only a few thousand velocity points difference, it's just so petty they aren't allowed to do it.

No problemos cancelling a route for commercial reasons, but the handling of this has been poor in my opinion.

 

[Must...Fly!]

Just called them, and they could only do a refund. Couldn't even transfer me to Singapore... they would have to cancel and then rebook. There's only a few thousand velocity points difference, it's just so petty they aren't allowed to do it.

No problemos cancelling a route for commercial reasons, but the handling of this has been poor in my opinion.

Well all I can say is at least they are not lying.

Any travel on or after 1 May is refund only. No re-accommodation options

https://www.virginaustralia.com/cs/groups/internetcontent/@wc-salesagenthub/documents/webcontent/~edisp/comm-policy-hkg-cessationv3.2.pdf

 

[Ralphie]

I’m so agitated by this. My agent’s tried to contact them to suggest alternatives but isn’t getting responses. The lack of proactive service and then the lack of responsiveness is amazing me.

I assume that as we’re in the after May bundle it’ll just be a refund, which is nice on the surface, but we won’t be able to replicate our planned trip within a similar budget/fit around now existing hotel and tour bookings, so we’re either going to end up cancelling the trip in its entirety or just finding another carrier to do half a trip instead.

It irks me that I raced to purchase the flights two weeks ago - because my agent was doing a bushfire challenge, to be fair nothing to do with VA themselves - when if I’d waited one more pay day I’d have known that our plans were in trouble and could have stopped everything myself.

My fairly fanatic loyalty to Virgin is being tested right now.

 

[hutch]

I’m so agitated by this. My agent’s tried to contact them to suggest alternatives but isn’t getting responses. The lack of proactive service and then the lack of responsiveness is amazing me.

I assume that as we’re in the after May bundle it’ll just be a refund, which is nice on the surface, but we won’t be able to replicate our planned trip within a similar budget/fit around now existing hotel and tour bookings, so we’re either going to end up cancelling the trip in its entirety or just finding another carrier to do half a trip instead.

It irks me that I raced to purchase the flights two weeks ago - because my agent was doing a bushfire challenge, to be fair nothing to do with VA themselves - when if I’d waited one more pay day I’d have known that our plans were in trouble and could have stopped everything myself.

My fairly fanatic loyalty to Virgin is being tested right now.

Yes. It is just really poor.

They don't seem to have any appreciation that people have a need to be places and refunds don't help. It's different if it is out of their hands, but they made a business decision (as they are entitled to do), but then have arbitrarly chosen a date and decided to not look after passengers from that point on. I'd have sympathy if they were flying somewhere no one else flew and couldn't provide options... It's Hong Kong though, and there are options both direct and on their partners.

Meanwhile, I'm now out of pocket, due to Virgins business decision. It doesn't seem ethical.

 

[Ralphie]

Yes. It is just really poor.

They don't seem to have any appreciation that people have a need to be places and refunds don't help. It's different if it is out of their hands, but they made a business decision (as they are entitled to do), but then have arbitrarly chosen a date and decided to not look after passengers from that point on. I'd have sympathy if they were flying somewhere no one else flew and couldn't provide options... It's Hong Kong though, and there are options both direct and on their partners.

Meanwhile, I'm now out of pocket, due to Virgins business decision. It doesn't seem ethical.

Agreed. And I appreciate that business decisions happen and they can’t warn people in advance but there’s something nagging at me that this decision would have been being worked on when I handed them over money for our fares.

So fairly or not, I feel like they took money knowing they wouldn’t end up providing the service. In their heads they may be thinking “it’s no problem we’ll just give the money back” but in that time I’ve gone well now flights are booked, we can book tours and hotels etc etc. I almost got over eager and did my ESTA. These are just small deposits etc and thankfully we chose refundable hotels but we be out of pocket on some holiday expenses but with no holiday.

And as you’ve noted - a refund isn’t their only option. Our flights were RTW. We only need one leg accommodated for the trip to continue on nicely and Hong Kong was purely a layover anyway. Their partner airlines can get us to Hong Kong or they can get us to London themselves via LAX. I’d even consider a downgrade from business just to get there. VA though seem to have chosen that after an arbitrary date to just do a “there’s nothing they can do” shrug, while seeming to do the bare minimum to contact some customers apart from tweets saying “we have a policy!”

I’m probably being unfair but we’ve been looking forward to this trip for so long and I’m really grouchy.

 

[hutch]

Agreed. And I appreciate that business decisions happen and they can’t warn people in advance but there’s something nagging at me that this decision would have been being worked on when I handed them over money for our fares.

So fairly or not, I feel like they took money knowing they wouldn’t end up providing the service. In their heads they may be thinking “it’s no problem we’ll just give the money back” but in that time I’ve gone well now flights are booked, we can book tours and hotels etc etc. I almost got over eager and did my ESTA. These are just small deposits etc and thankfully we chose refundable hotels but we be out of pocket on some holiday expenses but with no holiday.

And as you’ve noted - a refund isn’t their only option. Our flights were RTW. We only need one leg accommodated for the trip to continue on nicely and Hong Kong was purely a layover anyway. Their partner airlines can get us to Hong Kong or they can get us to London themselves via LAX. I’d even consider a downgrade from business just to get there. VA though seem to have chosen that after an arbitrary date to just do a “there’s nothing they can do” shrug, while seeming to do the bare minimum to contact some customers apart from tweets saying “we have a policy!”

I’m probably being unfair but we’ve been looking forward to this trip for so long and I’m really grouchy.

You are not being unfair. If we compare it to Qantas withdrawing from Beijing (the original business decision to withdraw, not the current situation) they offered:

Rebook to Qantas services via Hong Kong for travel +/- one (1) day from original booking

Rebook to Qantas marketed services to Beijing via Hangzhou (QF5005/5004) or via Nanjing (QF339/340)

Retain value as credit

Refund


It seems like a very odd world where Qantas is being held up as an example of a positive customer focused approach to a business change.

But anyway, I don't want to keep repeating myself and I won't achieve anything by just writing here. I intend to push the issue with Virgin to seek a refund of the points difference between the Singapore points fare and virgin. I might get no where, but I think it's a fight worth having.

 

[QFflyermelbourne]

They don't seem to have any appreciation that people have a need to be places and refunds don't help.

Meanwhile, I'm now out of pocket, due to Virgins business decision. It doesn't seem ethical.

I suspect they're completely aware of the implications and it's atypical for these sorts of situations. It makes me wonder just how bad Virgin's position is right now and how precarious the whole operation is. This is extreme penny pinching.

 

[hutch]

I suspect they're completely aware of the implications and it's atypical for these sorts of situations. It makes me wonder just how bad Virgin's position is right now and how precarious the whole operation is. This is extreme penny pinching.

Fair point. The problem for Virgin is if they have people suspecting they are in a precarious position, that may impact forward bookings making the situation worse. I didn't book an intra Asian flight on Hong Kong Airlines as I was worried they go belly up.

I'd personally think twice about booking Virgin Australia internationally again as I can't have confidence they'd get me there... Which then makes me also consider whether it's worth chasing velocity points... It's just a vicious cycle for the airline once they impact customer trust.

 

[Must...Fly!]

Quite true, trust is very important.

They probably didn't have much choice with Hong Kong, but they could have gone about it in a better way - that much is clear. But at least they made a quick decision instead of burning more and more cash.

I think the airline is in a stronger position than it was 12 months ago, particularly on the domestic front. Unfortunately though I am not convinced that Japan is going to be a winner in the current environment, though I sincerely hope that it is. Numbers on the transcontinental services look to be quite healthy (at least on the surface) so a couple more A330s flying this probably isn't quite the disaster it might have been.

It does however lead to the question of where any potentially displaced 737s fly. Or if it gives them ideas to paint them yellow. Has anyone ever seen a clear justification for the continued shuffling of fleet to Tiger?

 

[Saab34]

It does however lead to the question of where any potentially displaced 737s fly. Or if it gives them ideas to paint them yellow. Has anyone ever seen a clear justification for the continued shuffling of fleet to Tiger?

737s need to go to Tiger pronto. They are not even half way through the conversion yet.

 

[Must...Fly!]

737s need to go to Tiger pronto. They are not even half way through the conversion yet.

And what is the chance of them actually making any money?

Legitimate question, not attacking you or anything . It just undersells VA, in my opinion.

 

[docjames]

It does however lead to the question of where any potentially displaced 737s fly. Or if it gives them ideas to paint them yellow. Has anyone ever seen a clear justification for the continued shuffling of fleet to Tiger?

Supposedly fleet commonality / maintenance. THe delays to MAX have been a mixed blessing - Now the delay is helpful in terms of cash conservation, however they were originally to allow VA to have a more modern fleet, better trans-con narrowbody J, and decant older 737s to Tiger And get rid of the A320s.

There was talk at one stage of pilots and cabin crew being able to cross fleets but i suspect those plans have been dumped (Too hard basket.

 

[serfty]

VA reissued the policy document early Friday evening. Basically any affected travel before 1st May and for any travel to Japan, PAX with booking can be reaccomodated on variuos other carriers that can include QF.

From May the 1st, options are a full refund or rebooking to a different destination. With the latter all change fees to be waived and only any fare differences are to be paid for by the PAX.

 

[Ralphie]

Virgin have now affirmed my only option is a refund. I won’t be able to find an alternate RTW J fare that fits our dates within a similar budget, so we’re just going to book a completely different holiday with another carrier out of spite. We will have a small loss on non-refundable land bookings we’d made but we’ll unfortunately wear them.

I’m not going to say that I’m going to stop flying Virgin entirely, but I’m no longer going out of my way to choose them or their partners. I can respect the business decision, I can’t respect the lack of proactive contact, responsiveness or flexibility.

 

[Punky]

VA reissued the policy document early Friday evening. Basically any affected travel before 1st May and for any travel to Japan, PAX with booking can be reaccomodated on variuos other carriers that can include QF.

From May the 1st, options are a full refund or rebooking to a different destination. With the latter all change fees to be waived and only any fare differences are to be paid for by the PAX.

If it were me, I'd be seeking legal advice on their post may 1 options