19/11/23 | VA875 | MEL to SYD
Boarded on time with a warm welcome from Christy and CM Kim. PDB was offered so already an improvement over the SYD-MEL flight!
Meal orders were taken on the ground in the traditional order. I thought taking orders on the ground was a great idea, at the time. More on that later!
The options as described off the iPad were chicken with chat potatoes and greens or vegetarian pasta. I suspect these are the items described by
twinaisle as roasted soy caramel chicken with spicy potatoes and broccoli, with the pasta being the pumpkin and sage pasta with chilli and pepita crunch. I chose the chicken with a shiraz and sparkling water.
We pushed back on time but unfortunately due to weather-related runway issues at Sydney they were spacing out departures, this resulted in almost an hour of taxi time on the ground, during which crew were seated and the ovens were heating the meals past the point of no return!
Meals were brought around very quickly after take-off, probably didn't take longer than about ten minutes. Note the infamous chocolate heart has been replaced by a BSKT Davidson Plum chocolate square. It was nice but personally I think they should either provide a more substantial piece of chocolate/dessert or scrap it altogether.
Close up of the new dish.
I don't think it's fair to review this dish when it has been sitting in the oven for an hour, but if it was still this dry, tasteless and watery in normal circumstances I would have been disappointed.
The aircraft (-YIW) was fitted with Wi-Fi which was reliable enough to stream the Cricket World Cup final in standard definition.
Unfortunately no drink top-up was offered and there wasn't time to request one either, for some reason the captain announced we were starting descent about 45 minutes out of Sydney which led the crew to clear away everything and take their seats. Wasn't turbulent or anything so I'm not sure why this was the case but anyway, it is what it is!
Overall I would say it was an improvement compared to the first flight of the trip and the issues are outside the cabin crew's control, but to be honest I am wondering if I made the right choice prioritising and pursuing VA WP over other statuses. Hopefully international partner experience continues to make up for the domestic experience and VA improves once they are through this tricky pre-IPO period!