On Friday night my 4pm flight from Melbourne to Sydney was cancelled and I was put on the 5pm flight which was subsequently cancelled. When I had been told about the 4pm cancellation I tried to move to the 3pm flight and I was told it was overbooked by 8 people so there was nothing they could do. It meant I missed a significant speech my daughter gave to 150 people. I had been told two stories as to why the cancellation happened, one engineering and the other being planes diverting from Brisbane due to restrictions on the runway due to debris on runway, so I understand these things happen. I had 2 cancelled flights, yet other passengers going to Brisbane who were on later VA flights were unaffected (I understand the philosophy that it is better to upset a smaller number of people a lot, than upset a lot more people a little), colleagues of mine who were scheduled on the same service with Qantas got home, although delayed (In fact they were texting me and others when they got on the plane). At no time during this experience was anyone able to tell me when I would get home with VA and they just kept telling me the chartered flight would leave in an hour.
I ended up going on a chartered flight that Virgin booked (Alliance) that was meant to take off at 9.20 so it could offload Sydney passengers and then take off before curfew to get to Brisbane. All passengers were in place at 9.20 but paperwork from VA was not received until 10, so we landed in Sydney and couldn't take off due to curfew so we were given vouchers to a hotel and told we would be booked on a 9am flight. This would mean I would miss more commitments with my family on Saturday, especially with a pregnant wife struggling with three kids and lots of kid commitments. I called our company travel agent at 12.30pm, as we only got in our hotel after midnight as no bus was made available and we had to fight long taxi queues.
My travel agent got me on a Qantas flight so I could meet family commitments and this flight left at 7am which got me home in time. All affected passengers were clearly upset and found the 9am flight unacceptable. The Alliance plane we were on had to get back to Brisbane for its commitments early on Saturday and was going to take us to Brisbane on the Friday night before we missed curfew, so not sure why we were not told to get in early to get on that plane. The staff at Virgin were clearly stressed but their customer service was professional but were clearly operating with some poor information.
I thought I would tell this story as I thought they handled this situation badly and wanted to understand what others thought who were experienced travellers. I travel a lot on many airlines and this was by far the worst experience. I have lodged feedback with VA and have had no correspondence back from them.
I ended up going on a chartered flight that Virgin booked (Alliance) that was meant to take off at 9.20 so it could offload Sydney passengers and then take off before curfew to get to Brisbane. All passengers were in place at 9.20 but paperwork from VA was not received until 10, so we landed in Sydney and couldn't take off due to curfew so we were given vouchers to a hotel and told we would be booked on a 9am flight. This would mean I would miss more commitments with my family on Saturday, especially with a pregnant wife struggling with three kids and lots of kid commitments. I called our company travel agent at 12.30pm, as we only got in our hotel after midnight as no bus was made available and we had to fight long taxi queues.
My travel agent got me on a Qantas flight so I could meet family commitments and this flight left at 7am which got me home in time. All affected passengers were clearly upset and found the 9am flight unacceptable. The Alliance plane we were on had to get back to Brisbane for its commitments early on Saturday and was going to take us to Brisbane on the Friday night before we missed curfew, so not sure why we were not told to get in early to get on that plane. The staff at Virgin were clearly stressed but their customer service was professional but were clearly operating with some poor information.
I thought I would tell this story as I thought they handled this situation badly and wanted to understand what others thought who were experienced travellers. I travel a lot on many airlines and this was by far the worst experience. I have lodged feedback with VA and have had no correspondence back from them.