Virgin Australia flights to Doha

[Bagpuss]

Wondering if VA21 (Perth - Doha) is going to take off as planned on Thursday following the closed airspace and the subsequent disruptions taking they have been ferrying in the aircraft via KL for the Sydney and Brisbane inaugurals.

They could start with VA22 (Doha - Perth) on Friday.

(The fix would be to keep the A380 running and bump everyone onto the QR tagged flight).

Time will tell.

Looks like A7-BEL has been assigned for VA21

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[AuSammy]

How to confuse your passengers. A VA flight operated by QR on a one world branded plane

 

[AIRwin]

How to confuse your passengers. A VA flight operated by QR on a one world branded plane


View attachment 453673

A7-BAA BAA black sheep?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Interesting… PointHacks is saying VA ‘could have engaged almost any airline in the world to do this [VA1/2] flying for them. But they have chosen the QSuite planes from QR.

I thought this was because QR bought 25% of VA?

 

[MooTime]

Interesting… PointHacks is saying VA ‘could have engaged almost any airline in the world to do this [VA1/2] flying for them. But they have chosen the QSuite planes from QR.

I thought this was because QR bought 25% of VA?

But how many of the 'could have engaged almost any airline in the world' category would have paid close to a $Billion$ for a 24% cut of the pie?

I dare say not too many.

QR have the cash, wanted the slots and wanted to stick it to Qantas a little.

 

[Saab34]

Other way around. It’s Qatar engaging Virgin for the services but advertised the other way around.

Qantas has remained mute on this one. I somewhat think Alan would have kicked up a stink.

 

[#flying]

Other way around. It’s Qatar engaging Virgin for the services but advertised the other way around.

Qantas has remained mute on this one. I somewhat think Alan would have kicked up a stink.

Agree re Qatar engaging Virgin. PointHacks clearly don’t understand what’s going on.

Qantas wasn’t exactly mute though, they did put in a submission to the ACCC.

 

[ben95]

Qantas has remained mute on this one. I somewhat think Alan would have kicked up a stink.

He did with the bilateral and the backlash for both Qantas and the government was enormous which is why we’ve now arrived at this. Had Alan stay muted on this one Qatar would have gotten its 28 extra flights without the need to pay Bain billions

 

[jase05]

Interesting observation from a couple of recent QR flights On the KUL-DOH leg they did the usual welcome announcements to QR Privilege members, OW members and partner airlines but on the DOH-CAI leg for both departure and arrival they thanked QR Privilege members plus codeshare partners Virgin Australia and Cathay Pacific

 

[justinbrett]

Interesting observation from a couple of recent QR flights On the KUL-DOH leg they did the usual welcome announcements to QR Privilege members, OW members and partner airlines but on the DOH-CAI leg for both departure and arrival they thanked QR Privilege members plus codeshare partners Virgin Australia and Cathay Pacific

On my DOh-CAI flight a few weeks ago it was QR, OW and VA. I suspect that’s what they’re supposed to say (ie, not omit OW).

 

[FlyingKangaroo]

Well a predictably excruciating start so far this morning trying to take advantage of the PointsMe upgrade for the VA 1-29 Doha flights.

Per the website, the contact centre opens at 5am. I'm fortunately overseas where it's not a horrendous hour. I call at 5am. Input Velocity number and pin only to hear that I was being transferred to out-of-hours which can handle "urgent" issues and to call back when "premium line" is open from "6am-7pm." I wait 10 minutes and try again. Same response.

Hung up and decided to wait until 6am, but after a few minutes, it occurs to me that while an actual opening time of 6am instead of 5am seems plausible, a closing time of 7pm seemed way too early. "I know I've called for things after 7pm before... is this something to do with the 'premium line'?"

I called back and did not input my Velocity number. I'm transferred to the normal menu; it seems the contact centre is open at 5am after all. I'm now thinking, "was I just told to call back later as a platinum simply because the 'premium' line isn't open yet? What a perk!"

No matter. After transferring me to the international team, the actually-open contact centre has no idea what I'm asking about and it quickly becomes clear this call is going nowhere despite my attempts to methodically explain my request and the new policy to the agent,.

I politely hang up and this time try my luck with the "out of hours" team. Again I have to clarify my request and explain to the agent what I'm calling about. This time I'm told the seats are available for "waitlist" (despite four seats on that flight showing available per an online search). Questioning this point isn't necessary as the agent also tells me to call back only after 7:30am to speak to the Velocity team. The website says to make requests via contact centre, not Velocity, but whatever.

I politely hang up again and decide to wait until 6am for the premium line to open. This time, the agent understands exactly what I'm asking for and is able to confirm availability, however a "system error" has prevented her from proceeding. I'm told to "call back in an hour."

I acknowledge this is a new thing for VA, but I sure lament how difficult it is to do almost anything meaningful online with VA (and QF, for that matter).

 

[L_MareeB]

Well a predictably excruciating start so far this morning trying to take advantage of the PointsMe upgrade for the VA 1-29 Doha flights.

Per the website, the contact centre opens at 5am. I'm fortunately overseas where it's not a horrendous hour. I call at 5am. Input Velocity number and pin only to hear that I was being transferred to out-of-hours which can handle "urgent" issues and to call back when "premium line" is open from "6am-7pm." I wait 10 minutes and try again. Same response.

Hung up and decided to wait until 6am, but after a few minutes, it occurs to me that while an actual opening time of 6am instead of 5am seems plausible, a closing time of 7pm seemed way too early. "I know I've called for things after 7pm before... is this something to do with the 'premium line'?"

I called back and did not input my Velocity number. I'm transferred to the normal menu; it seems the contact centre is open at 5am after all. I'm now thinking, "was I just told to call back later as a platinum simply because the 'premium' line isn't open yet? What a perk!"

No matter. After transferring me to the international team, the actually-open contact centre has no idea what I'm asking about and it quickly becomes clear this call is going nowhere despite my attempts to methodically explain my request and the new policy to the agent,.

I politely hang up and this time try my luck with the "out of hours" team. Again I have to clarify my request and explain to the agent what I'm calling about. This time I'm told the seats are available for "waitlist" (despite four seats on that flight showing available per an online search). Questioning this point isn't necessary as the agent also tells me to call back only after 7:30am to speak to the Velocity team. The website says to make requests via contact centre, not Velocity, but whatever.

I politely hang up again and decide to wait until 6am for the premium line to open. This time, the agent understands exactly what I'm asking for and is able to confirm availability, however a "system error" has prevented her from proceeding. I'm told to "call back in an hour."

I acknowledge this is a new thing for VA, but I sure lament how difficult it is to do almost anything meaningful online with VA (and QF, for that matter).

I feel your pain. Dealing with their call centre is the, uhm, Bain of my existence

 

[FlyingKangaroo]

Have reached Velocity. Agent was competent. System isn’t working for upgrades on VA 1-29. It’s now a known issue but they’ve no idea how long it will take to resolve and there is no way to hold available seats in the meantime. Advice was to “call back from time to time every few hours.” Ages of lead-time to prepare for this but still failed.

Magnificent.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Have reached Velocity. Agent was competent. System isn’t working for upgrades on VA 1-29. It’s now a known issue but they’ve no idea how long it will take to resolve and there is no way to hold available seats in the meantime. Advice was to “call back from time to time every few hours.” Magnificent.

I think you mean ‘wonderful’

 

[AIRwin]

Bain of my existence

Bain Maree's existence?

 

[L_MareeB]

Bain Maree's existence?

Noice

 

[FlyingKangaroo]

I called again after an hour for an update and rather amusingly ended back up with the same agent. She advised the system was still not up and running but now indicated it would be live at 10am AEST.

Just called in after 10am and followed the same trajectory as earlier attempts. Agent finally came back from a hold to confirm number of points which is further than I'd gotten previously. Several more minutes on hold... and failed. "Please call again at 11am."

Safe to say they don't actually know when they'll have this fixed.

 

[FlyingKangaroo]

Update: called after 11; still no luck. Manila team is trying their best but system is just broken and they're clearly now without any instruction as to what to do or how long it will take to fix.

I'll report back if I ever succeed. Otherwise, if anyone else has any luck, would be great to hear how you do it.

 

[mled]

Update: called after 11; still no luck. Manila team is trying their best but system is just broken and they're clearly now without any instruction as to what to do or how long it will take to fix.

I'll report back if I ever succeed. Otherwise, if anyone else has any luck, would be great to hear how you do it.

Have had the same issue. Had the Manila team tell me to come back after 11am, got through just now and it was someone based in Australia.

She still clearly had no clue - thought it was just Flex fares (even for Velocity Gold/Plat), told me there’s no waitlist (which the Virgin website suggests there is?) then eventually said there were no upgrades for my flight and just told me to call from time to time until my flight.

Took advantage of the sale on points last night to top me up to the total so really hoping something comes through eventually!

 

[aaronm]

I think I'll wait a few days before calling up. Based on seat selection in Y loads look relatively light so I'm optimistic an upgrade will open up at some point