Help - Who’s Had Problems with Webjet?

[KAH]

Good to hear that you arrived safely albeit not on the day you intended. An overnight flight in an ageing Delta 757 would not have been the best possible experience (the youngest Delta 757 is 17 years old and the oldest still in service is over 30 years old) - but at least you got there!! And Delta did not ask you to repurchase your domestic sector.
The trigger for the disruption of your travels was Virgin Australia. The removal of their Boeing 777-300ER VH-VPH for unscheduled maintenance has had some major consequences for many VA passengers over an extended period of time. I think the 777 was out of action for well over two weeks.
No doubt VA partner Delta would have had to reroute a number of disrupted passengers. So it is not just the passengers that were inconvenienced.
As for Webjet, the level of service provided is, no doubt, reflective of the profit margin now earned by travel agents these days. Gone are the days of large travel agent commissions and even larger 'over-rides'. There was a point when US carrier Continental was offering agents that met targets over-rides for the Australian East Coast to US routes, over-rides of as much as 30% of ticket price!! That was, of course, long ago. With those profit margins, the agency had the time and resources (and interest) to keep their customers happy.
Now days international travel is seen, not as a special experience, but as a commodity. And as we know from an avalanche of evidence, trading in commodities of any type is highly price sensitive. - hence low profit margins are common with commodities.

With luck your return trip will not be disrupted by Virgin Australia (VH VPH is well and truly back in service) or anyone else. Other than delays (of between 45 minutes and around 2 hours 15 minutes) into and out of Sydney in the past few days (16 to 20 July), Virgin Australia has been running an on time service across the Pacific. Let's hope it stays that way and you get home on the day you expect.

Anyway - enjoy you time in the US!! The New York area is an incredible experience and the weather looks like being reasonably kind to you. Other than today, it looks like you are going to temperatures in the low 80 degrees F ( or high 20s C). Safe travels.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

mjt - the issue here isn't VA, it's webjet. Whether you had been booked on Virgin or Qantas, zero difference - even Qantas would have referred you back to webjet to make any changes.

If all the flights were on the one ticket the airlines would have protected your onward flight. While I 100% agree it was desirable to have the new flight arranged before you left Australia, it would have been sorted out at some stage before you arrived in the USA. While you were unable to see availabilty for connecting flights on Delta, airlines will routinely overbook flights for exactly this reason - they can force you on and you'll benefit from someone else who can't make the flight.

You mentioned travel insurance might cover you if you decided not to fly at all... I don't believe this would have been the case. So I'm glad you decided to travel. Your insurance may have covered any hotels and meals in LAX had you been delayed under the 'delay' section of your insurance - usually kicks in after 6 hours though.

 

[mjt57]

Thanks for the replies, folks.

We got home on Thursday. Return trip was uneventful. The JFK-LAX sector was on a B767 (with winglets). Better seating than the B757 with 2-4-2 config. We had 2 on the left over the wing (which looked huge in comparision to some others).

@MEL_Traveller, yes, I know that Webjet, not the airline was which caused us the grief in trying to reschedule flights. I just don't like those other airlines because of their cough service and uncomfortable cabins.