Lack of Food on VA Int flight OOL>DPS

[theblank]

Flew OOL to DPS on VA83 in mid december, its an early evening flight.
To my surprise Virgin no longer provides complimentary meals - I either didnt know that or had forgotten Bain has lowered its service level. Not complaining about that, who cares we were hungry. It was dinnertime.

So had to buy the meal from the very limited selection, but by the the time the food cart reached my seat at least 10 rows from the rear, the hostie says "sorry we have run out of cooked meals"

Seriously. A 6 hour flight scheduled to depart at 17:00 didnt have enough food to feed us? and it appeared by observation that only about half the plane actually wanted to eat. I guess these other buggars were smart enough to grab something at the airport.

She did offer me the ham and cheese toastie (breakfast food) or the Instant Noodles (the ones you can buy for $1 and pour hot water in)

I dont mind if the cheap airlines charge us for food, but if they are not gonna have any, we are gunna have to start eating the other passengers.

 

[AustraliaPoochie]

If you have a look at the VA booking website, in Y, you or we as in the flying pax has to pay for food on board.
Its most likely that there was limited catering brought on board, probably as you surmised, as cost savings by Bain.
Not surprised.
Too, it could also be that those in the forward seats had taken up the cooked food optioned.
On the booking website of VA, its says something like "food can be purchased (food on board for a fee)" on the lower fares.

 

[elanshin]

The other solution they could do is offer prebooked meals. They'd also get that money in advance and avoid this silly situation. Feels like a dumb oversight more than anything else given it actively helps VA in many ways as long as they can cough up the small (comparatively) cost in IT and logistics to implement it.

 

[HS-TQE]

The other solution they could do is offer prebooked meals. They'd also get that money in advance and avoid this silly situation. Feels like a dumb oversight more than anything else given it actively helps VA in many ways as long as they can cough up the small (comparatively) cost in IT and logistics to implement it.

Agree. Batik Air Malaysia is VA's direct Value Carrier rival in the region, operate the same type of aircraft (738, 7M8) and they also offer pre-booked meals in Y alongside their BoB menu in Y.

If OD can do it, VA should be able to do it as well. The problem is VA's IT which was reportedly an issue going back in the VA 1.0/Borghetti/Hogan/Singapore/Etihad era.

 

[MooTime]

Surely they make a profit on selling the food onboard.

So it's just a determination guesstimation, space available on how many meals they pack.

I wouldn't say so much as Bain being stingy in this circumstance, more sales, more revenue/profit.

 

[antycbr]

If OD can do it, VA should be able to do it as well. The problem is VA's IT which was reportedly an issue going back in the VA 1.0/Borghetti/Hogan/Singapore/Etihad era.

If I remember correctly V Australia was on Amadeus and Virgin Blue was on Navitaire OpenSkies. They chose to move on to Sabre rather than consolidating everything to Amadeus which would have been a more expensive but correct call.

 

[SeaWolf]

The problem is VA's IT which was reportedly an issue going back in the VA 1.0/Borghetti/Hogan/Singapore/Etihad era.

There's a very good Wendover vid on YouTube that delves into the problems with airline IT systems in general. VA is certainly not alone in having these sort of issues and a lot of the IT systems that we use today from airlines are just slick wrappers that sit on top of ancient infrastructure that makes implementing these things a lot trickier than it seems on the surface.

 

[twinaisle]

I wouldn't say so much as Bain being stingy in this circumstance, more sales, more revenue/profit.

Yes they are. They call it "food wastage" to mask being stingy. They load around 20 meals for us to sell.

"Due to high wastage of perishables, we've taken the action to reduce loadings"

 

[Warragul]

If I remember correctly V Australia was on Amadeus and Virgin Blue was on Navitaire OpenSkies. They chose to move on to Sabre rather than consolidating everything to Amadeus which would have been a more expensive but correct call.

OD is on Sabre as well, but whether the prebuy meals portal is part of RES/DCS or separate (and more $$ to implement) and imported into RES/DCS as a SSR is another question.

All the data hosts have different releases of their products, so 2 airlines on the same host might be running slightly different versions with variances in functionality. It costs money to upgarde from Version 1.0 to 1.5 etc. Plus any bespoke changes made by the airline themslelves.

 

[Quickstatus]

Due to high wastage of perishables, we've taken the action to reduce loadings

Less wastage if it is "free"

 

[MooTime]

Yes they are. They call it "food wastage" to mask being stingy. They load around 20 meals for us to sell.

"Due to high wastage of perishables, we've taken the action to reduce loadings"

So they should have more meals to sell? 40, 80?
Then what on a slow sales day, throw more in the bin?

The more they sell the more profit. Not sure what your answer would be.

Imagine throwing out 50 meals straight in the bin, How'd that look?

 

[elanshin]

Yes they are. They call it "food wastage" to mask being stingy. They load around 20 meals for us to sell.

"Due to high wastage of perishables, we've taken the action to reduce loadings"

I agree with this on a business level hence why it's crazy they don't work to get prebooked in place. They can get load factors much more accurately and ahead of schedule and also pocket the money months before the flight (that's probably literally millions in interest).

 

[AustraliaPoochie]

Wasnt it that due to to religion and quarantine too, certain foods can't be brought cross borders, on certain flight routes, food wise.
Pork based foods has some limitations.
---
And we can't take leftovers off int flights esp coming into Aust.
Food provided on board must be left on board.
They probably have to incinerate leftover foods.

 

[HS-TQE]

Wasnt it that due to to religion and quarantine too, certain foods can't be brought cross borders, on certain flight routes, food wise.
Pork based foods has some limitations.
---
And we can't take leftovers off int flights esp coming into Aust.
Food provided on board must be left on board.
They probably have to incinerate leftover foods.

Batik Air Indonesia iirc carry a large amount of Muslim Indonesians, similar would go for Batik Air Malaysia carrying Muslim Malaysians, so I'm sure the Batik Air Group would be aware of what Pre-Book meals to offer to their customer base. Perhaps VA could learn a bit from OD/ID (in regards to pre-booked meals) if any their customer base ends up booking VA at some point.

 

[Ade]

Imagine throwing out 50 meals straight in the bin, How'd that look?

"Due to high wastage of perishables, we've taken the action to reduce loadings"

I'd say that offering pax to pre-purchase meals would be a a deterrent to this?

Granted there will be *some* wastage - I'm basing my thoughts on the idea that pax would at least consume some of the meal if they had already paid for it ...

 

[twinaisle]

They don't want to invest in the infrastructure to do it. We use to do it but it's too hard basket.

Knowing the catering company they'd not load meals or something would happen

 

[MooTime]

With VA only having very small number of international VAi flights I suspect it's not worth the IT, infrastructure etc to support a pre purchase concept.

Simple as that imo.

Yes they had it at one stage I get that.

.

 

[Ade]

infrastructure etc to support a pre purchase concept.

Would it be fair to assume that when this infra is being built (IT wise), it would be built to accommodate pre-ordering for domestic J pax, pre-purchasing for domestic, TT, TC pax? In this case, I'd think it makes sense to invest in this infra now, so that when VA wants to expand it is one less thing to worry about ...

Already Dom Y pax have BoB. Why not make that BoB more interesting by offering choices and making more $$ ?

 

[twinaisle]

Would it be fair to assume that when this infra is being built (IT wise), it would be built to accommodate pre-ordering for domestic J pax, pre-purchasing for domestic, TT, TC pax? In this case, I'd think it makes sense to invest in this infra now, so that when VA wants to expand it is one less thing to worry about ...

Already Dom Y pax have BoB. Why not make that BoB more interesting by offering choices and making more $$ ?

The only BOB Dom wise is toasties etc.

What makes sense to most doesn't make sense to a low cost. I mean hybrid

 

[justinbrett]

If they're only selling 20 meals they can't be making much profit on that. Hardly seems worth the effort.

I think hot food is hard to find on US airlines in Y, which are probably closest to the model used by VA.

I think it's also the reason QF decided to make alcohol free for all, considering it was the only thing for sale onboard, once they had to stop taking cash it wasn't worth putting in a purchase system for it.