Virgin Australia is temporarily no longer providing complimentary snacks to Economy class passengers on domestic flights. The airline has also stopped serving tea, coffee, juice and complimentary Happy Hour drinks in Economy class as part of a new “simplified” onboard food and beverage menu. This includes flights to and from Perth, where a full meal is usually served.
Instead, Virgin Australia guests flying in Economy class are now being offered only complimentary water. Additional snacks and drinks can be purchased from the buy-on-board retail menu.
Virgin Australia says that the temporary changes are a result of COVID-19 and reduced travel demand.
But it appears to be largely a cost-cutting move, as there are minimal health risks in serving individually packaged snacks to passengers.
Virgin normally advertises complimentary food and drinks for all passengers as a core part of its domestic service offering. But at a time like this, with many state borders closed and 90% of Virgin’s domestic flights cancelled, most passengers are unlikely to mind. Most of us currently have bigger things to worry about!
Virgin Australia says that normal catering will remain on charter flights.
Passengers are allowed to bring their own snacks onto Virgin flights. All Virgin Australia lounges are currently closed, but at most Australian airports, some stores remain open for take-away service.
If you’re flying in the coming weeks or months, you may consider burning some Velocity points or bidding for an upgrade. Business class passengers on domestic Virgin flights will continue to receive a complimentary meal and beverages. You can see what’s being served in Virgin Australia Business class on our dedicated AFF thread: Virgin Australia Business Class Catering – Service, Meal times, Menus
At the same time, Qantas has suspended in-flight meals on domestic services but continues to serve complimentary snacks and water on all flights.
Qantas has done the same thing as well.
Here’s a snippet from MMB on the QF site: “As part of our response to the evolving Coronavirus situation, we’re making some temporary changes to our inflight service. We will no longer be serving meals on domestic or regional flights. Our crew will continue to offer a complimentary bottle of water and a snack on these services.
We appreciate your understanding.”
Might be a touch more fair to say “Virgin temporarily axes complimentary snacks on domestic flights” ?
Yes, we shall see what happens down the road, but where Virgin and others have specifically said this is a temporary measure in response to the current situation, it should be reported as such.
Jetstar are doing the same as QF… complimentary bottle of water and snack.
So because of less competition on flights especially to rural areas you will now have to pay more than there already extortionate prices yet receive less service just seems like an excuse to cost cut. If the planes where serious about this corona virus they would limit the amount of people on the flights so they can be socially distanced correctly not packed in like cattle .with no distancing between passengers .
Why is this a virgin are cutting food….,qantas seem to be similar…
We need two airlines in Australia now about some parody???
I remember Ansett went down to just offering a plastic cup of water and looked what happened to them. Hope VA don’t go under depends how deep a pockets their shareholders have. AU tax payer should not be bailing out any airline whether thats VA or QF.