What happened to VH-VPH? [773 Out of Service June 15th to July 4th]

[cheynejonstone]

VH-VPH Flight Tracking and History - FlightAware

Track VH-VPH flight from Brisbane to Wellcamp Airport

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So it appears that VH-VPH flew into LAX last Friday and hasn't left. It's causing big delays in VA's schedule and now my flight VA23 from MEL to LAX on Monday has been changed from a 11:20AM departure to a 7:50PM departure even though the metal comes in at 5:50PM a full day earlier? It's also screwed with my connections.

If they anticipate VH-VPH to be out of the air for over a week there must be something significantly wrong with it?

Regards,
CJ

 

[flyer89]

There’s still no real information out there on just why the aircraft has been out of service for so long...that’s what I’d really like to hear about.

The only rumour I’ve heard is fuel tank issue. Then again could be completely made up.

 

[Bagpuss]

According to FlightRadar24 there is still no sign of Boeing VH VHP. So this is now day 17 or 18 that VA is trying to keep their LAX schedules going with only 4 B77Ws.
Looking over the three routes - LAX to BNE, SYD and MEL, reveal the challenges of a small fleet being over-stretched. Lots of re-timed services, especially BNE. Must be chaos for both staff and passengers. I can see no signs of added equipment from other sources being used to recover and restore regular schedules.
Commentary in media generally negative about VA. One observation that daylight services for LAX is preferred to only night departures. Maybe that is a hint that VA might look into. Flights leaving LAX for BNE mean that arrival can be early enough to get same day connections to many ports including SYD, MEL and even PER. Maybe VA management might give this some careful thought.

You're not really saying anything that isn't found on FlightRadar24.

When the aircraft leaves Victorville (VCV) it will most likely appear an hour or so prior to its departure. So when it gets loaded the aircraft will go back in service. It will likely be in scheduled service within a few hours of arriving into LAX.

Flights are mainly set for arrivals into LAX early in the morning .. For onward connections and late from LAX for the inbound connections. To improve aircraft utilization they did introduce a few flights outside these hours. Though to lessen the current impact they are just trying to get things moving.

The reality is quite simple, Virgin wouldn't be happy about the maintenance issues and they would want it resolved. Travel disruptions are going to happen and customers as well as staff aren't going to be happy. It's gone on for an extended prior of time which is unfortunate and it will be classified as a one-off incident.

It's no point saying the issues are raised due to a small fleet as this isn't rare. SQ have a very small fleet of A350-900ULR and also with all the flying and reliance on QF's A380's so you could still say that's a small fleet.

 

[Bagpuss]

KAH, could you please link us to some of the negative commentary? I had a quick look recently and couldn't find any (though some may be paywalled.)

There have been a number of visitor posts on Virgin Australia's Facebook page. However, nothing overly major but the comments you would expect. It's not as if no services are running whatsoever.

I'd 100% believe some passengers have been moved onto Delta flights and I wouldn't be surprised if some passengers were moved onto SQ. (If you were a business passenger flying from New York, if they offered you to fly on SQ back instead of Delta/Virgin I'd highly recommend taking the offer.)

 

[auflier]

So you know the roles of the staff ?

The plane would be fixed by the qualified engineers in the USA and not Head Office staff in QLD.
Whilst I expect there are call centre staff in QLD I highly doubt it’s the main call centre for the company.

If you are witnessing so many staff on coffee breaks, what you are doing lingering around ? Having a drive to your favourite coffee shop ?

Lol like you know what I do mr/Ms virgin staff great to see you defend your company though.
More planes more route please? And work hard for us members!

 

[Bagpuss]

Lol like you know what I do mr/Ms virgin staff great to see you defend your company though.
More planes more route please? And work hard for us members!

I live in Perth and don't work for Virgin, nor do I work in the Aviation industry.

 

[SeaWolf]

With all these saga, VA head office staff are too busy hanging around their local cafe or taking coffee run like there is no work waiting for them...witnessed it often when passing by.

That seems a little sinister that you're monitoring the staff movements around VA Head Office. Are you connected to VA in a professional capacity?

 

[Must...Fly!]

God forbid they go out for coffee with coworkers.

How many public servants do you see doing that on a daily basis in Canberra?

Why aren't they fixing the tax system!!

None of this is really relevant to the issue of -VPH and it's mysterious absence...conspiracy theories welcome

 

[Bagpuss]

FlightRadar24 has VH-VPH operating VA8 on 3rd July.
This would indicate the aircraft has been allocated to the scheduled flight.
As per a previous post the positioning flight will most likely appear a few hours before as FlightRadar24 will get that information feed from Air Traffic Control. I expect it will position on the afternoon of the 3rd.

 

[auflier]

I live in Perth and don't work for Virgin, nor do I work in the Aviation industry.

Sad face. I hoped they heard me. Now all hope s lost.

 

[QF WP]

To finish this off topic sidebar, when I used to work in Spring Hill, I used to regularly go down to the VA HQ and see Brett Godfrey. The coffee shop on the ground floor of their building did a roaring trade in coffee. Every staff member has a break, they can decide to spend it wherever they want.

Then I moved my business to Fortitude Valley and they moved to Edmonstone Street, Bowen Hills. I used to drive past twice a day (at least) and often saw the staff on breaks. Given the stressful environment, getting out of the building and the environment is very important to the wellbeing of staff.

back on topic, I'm sure that VA Management are as frustrated as pax, as it this unserviceable aircraft disrupts the normal operations. I'm sure that Paul Scurrah and his team are trying to find the best solution and getting daily briefings from Boeing on the fix. I'd hate to be having to make the decision about cancelling flights regularly for LAX/BNE or SYD or MEL (and vice versa), knowing how many people it affects (pax, crew, catering, services et al). As @jb747 advised above, it's not as simple as wet leasing a plane at short notice. Boeing similarly weren't expecting to have to take on what is probably a difficult fix. We haven't even started to consider the overall cost (maintenance, lost revenue, brand damage).

 

[KAH]

Boeing 77W appears to be on the move within the next 36 hours of so. The aircraft is scheduled to operate VA8 LAX to BNE on July 3rd at 20.30 local. The craft was out of service since June 14th. This will have cost VA a sizeable chunk of revenue and some reputation.
Some social media and negative press will have cost VA. While a lot of future passengers will make choices only on price, some (especially in premium cabins) will seek reliability more than lowest cost. The physical J class product us excellent, some argue that it is preferable to QF product - even the B789 product. But even a great physical product does not beat getting to where you want to go on the day you want to be there.
My take away is the VA is overly stretched with their fleet size in trying to run the schedules they are marketing. As far as I can see this is true of both Australia to both LAX and HKG routes. So while it may be a serious competitor on Australian domestic routes, the risk of its limited ability to recover from non-scheduled maintenance has resulted in my next decision to look elsewhere for my next trips to both China and the US.

 

[Bagpuss]

Boeing 77W appears to be on the move within the next 36 hours of so. The aircraft is scheduled to operate VA8 LAX to BNE on July 3rd at 20.30 local. The craft was out of service since June 14th. This will have cost VA a sizeable chunk of revenue and some reputation.
Some social media and negative press will have cost VA. While a lot of future passengers will make choices only on price, some (especially in premium cabins) will seek reliability more than lowest cost. The physical J class product us excellent, some argue that it is preferable to QF product - even the B789 product. But even a great physical product does not beat getting to where you want to go on the day you want to be there.
My take away is the VA is overly stretched with their fleet size in trying to run the schedules they are marketing. As far as I can see this is true of both Australia to both LAX and HKG routes. So while it may be a serious competitor on Australian domestic routes, the risk of its limited ability to recover from non-scheduled maintenance has resulted in my next decision to look elsewhere for my next trips to both China and the US.

Unsure why you have re-posted information already stated.
This is 2019 where airlines will work their assets as hard as possible.
It doesn’t matter if an airline has one or fifty aircraft, if the aircraft allocated to a flight and it goes tech 90% of the time you will be affected and there will be a ripple affect. Domestic flights are less subjected to a domino effect as to international.
Anyway you have made 8 posts in total, all in reference to this aircraft and been a little negative.
Virgin aren’t overstretch it their fleet. They mostly have a very long downtime in LAX from the early morning arrival to the late evening departure.
Once the aircraft is flying again the matter will soon be forgotten.
If Virgin have a fare to the USA for $950, and all other airlines are above this it would be interesting on how you would react. It’s easy to threat and much harder to make true.
Hopefully, you will continue to contribute and not be a one thread wonder......

 

[ojm]

I’m doubting people in premium cabins we’re impacted much considering whilst this ‘fiasco’ was going on as I got upgraded to business both ways on a PE ticket. Seems to show that they weren’t struggling to get business travellers across the pacific.

 

[eastwest101]

So what are the possible explanations that would require a common type of aircraft to be in Victorville for 2 weeks out of service yet be able to be ferried to Victorville and not be grounded at LAX?

I was thinking contaminated fuel but surely other aircraft would also have been affected? Maybe a damaged fuel tank but was able to be ferried to VCV on other tanks, I imagine a main fuel tank replacement/repair would be a big job. Possibly structural like a tailstrike? Don't know about the legality of ferrying an aircraft with structural damage though, whatever the case it's serious enough to take out of service but not so serious that VA or the US regulators feel the need to report on.

 

[straitman]

There are quite a few different reasons why an a/c is serviceable for ferry flights but not for passenger flights.

A fuel sensor problem that is being hard to find is the obvious one that comes to mind.

 

[Saab34]

Fuel contamination is nasty and can take many weeks/months to fix. Tiger Singapore had a horrendous one few years ago on a brand new machine, took Airbus 3 months to fix it.

PR does not appear to be that bad. It hasn’t made any news websites. I wouldn’t have even known if I wasn’t passing this forum. Virgin are lucky in this part in that QF seems to cop a lot of spray for any hint of mechanical issue. Nobody says boo at Virgin.

 

[KAH]

Unsure why you have re-posted information already stated.
This is 2019 where airlines will work their assets as hard as possible......

Virgin aren’t overstretch it their fleet. They mostly have a very long downtime in LAX from the early morning arrival to the late evening departure......
Hopefully, you will continue to contribute and not be a one thread wonder...…"

My apologizes if my contribution was not first to market or readily understood. I repeat my contention is that VA is stretched in respect of its transpacific operations. This is not a theoretical assertion but supported by evidence. By stretched I am referring to passengers being disadvantaged by irregular operations in the form of cancelled flights, delayed flights (using standard regulator definition) or retimed operations from the original published timetable.

Since VH VPH went into unscheduled maintenance, VA’s Australia – US operations appears to have experienced one (or more) irregular operational incidents every day for 17 days in a row. Looking over the 90 days to July 2nd, other providers (UA, QF, DL and NZ) all appear to have experienced irregular operations, but in all cases these carriers have seem to recover to regular operations within 48 hours or less.

I agree, all airlines seek to use assets productively (no-one would dispute this), the management of some airlines might be more successful at this objective than others. Long periods of irregular operations are consistent with ‘stretched’ utilization of assets. The data described above supports the position that many transpacific carriers have shorter recovery times than VA.

I have assigned one of the associates in research division to pull the data for a longer period and retest this evidence more comprehensively. I will get him to look at VA’s ‘recovery time’ before the agreement with NZ was terminated and after that event. That lost NZ capacity might be key to VA’s current performance. Publishing those results might help better inform the market.

It is also of interest to look at the capital market’s reaction to VA’s performance. Again, using real world data, VA’s lowest share price has been during the period of outage of VH-VPH. I believe that the share price hit an all-time low price of 16 cents in recent days. Since it was known that VH-VPH heading back to operations, there was a modest recovery to 17 cents. This is around 50% down on the price that Air NZ got when it exited from most of it shares to Chinese interests in mid-2016. Some will see these numbers as a commentary on VA performance.

Just to be clear, I have no conflict of interest. I have no commercial or employment interest in any airline in Australia or New Zealand. My observations, positive or negative are not influenced by such potential biases.

 

[QF WP]

I have assigned one of the associates in research division to pull the data for a longer period and retest this evidence more comprehensively. I will get him to look at VA’s ‘recovery time’ before the agreement with NZ was terminated and after that event. That lost NZ capacity might be key to VA’s current performance. Publishing those results might help better inform the market.

Well you've certainly piqued my curiosity - you are senior enough to direct another employee in your organisation to possibly do research outside the ambit of their usual employment, given you state:

Just to be clear, I have no conflict of interest. I have no commercial or employment interest in any airline in Australia or New Zealand. My observations, positive or negative are not influenced by such potential biases.

I'm all eyes for his data and somebody's hypothesis / conclusions drawn.

 

[jb747]

Fuel contamination is nasty and can take many weeks/months to fix. Tiger Singapore had a horrendous one few years ago on a brand new machine, took Airbus 3 months to fix it.

Perhaps we'll never find out the real cause, but I wouldn't have thought you could fly the aircraft to Victorville if there had been fuel contamination. It would not be contained to one tank, or set of plumbing.

 

[Bagpuss]

My apologizes if my contribution was not first to market or readily understood. I repeat my contention is that VA is stretched in respect of its transpacific operations. This is not a theoretical assertion but supported by evidence. By stretched I am referring to passengers being disadvantaged by irregular operations in the form of cancelled flights, delayed flights (using standard regulator definition) or retimed operations from the original published timetable.

Are you aware that British Airways business only flight between London City and New York (outbound via Ireland) has a fleet size of one A318?

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I've previsuly been on a Singapore Airlines flight from Perth - Osaka (via Singapore) the same A330 was allocated to fly both sectors and the aircraft went tech in Singapore. It took Singapore 7 hours to allocate an alternative aircraft.

Considering it was in their home port and they have 17 A330's ( Singapore Airlines Fleet of A330 (Active) | Airfleets aviation ) ... I don't think they are over stretching their fleet.

Unscheduled issues will always arise and airlines aren't going to pay millions of dollars to have a spare aircraft "just in case".

Since VH VPH went into unscheduled maintenance, VA’s Australia – US operations appears to have experienced one (or more) irregular operational incidents every day for 17 days in a row. Looking over the 90 days to July 2nd, other providers (UA, QF, DL and NZ) all appear to have experienced irregular operations, but in all cases these carriers have seem to recover to regular operations within 48 hours or less.

Lets compare apples with apples. It has taken 19 days to fix VH-VPH. I assume the other aircraft which went tech weren't out of service for so long. If it took 1 day to VH-VPH it wouldn't have had such a long impact.