Roping off business with no guests.

[samas]

I was on an ADL-PER flight on Monday night. (VA721, 17th Feb on a 737) and when the cabin supervisor started doing the announcements they were doing the spiel that included business. (welcoming business guests, and then once we were airborne saying they would off the dinner service to business before proceeding to flexis and other items for sale. Not forgetting to state the front lavatory was for use by business guests only.) The magnetic rope was also very promptly put up, seemed faster than ever.

This was all unusual as there was not a single J pax onboard. Expertflyer indicated that there were only 7 J seats available for sale, but there were no allocated seats in business on the seat map. The rope remained there the whole flight.

Whilst making a trip down the back for the loo during flight I asked one of the four cabin crew all sitting up the back reading magazines if this was a new procedure to rope off J with 0 guests. The response I got was that passengers had been milling around business too much. (which I assumed might have been on the previous MEL-ADL sector the aircraft previously operated.).

A couple of my flights in the last two months had zero business pax and the front toilet remained open for all. Anyone else seen this? I wrote it off to laziness as to not wanting to clean the front toilet, or they just wanted to keep it for their own use?

 

[smit0847]

This just sounds like a lazy and forgetful CSM to me. Everytime I have been on a flight with no J pax they have not welcomed J pax or mentioned their meal service or mentioned front lav for J pax only (or roped it off) as its silly and offensive to the other pax to restrict a lav for J pax when there are no J pax!

It is only going to irritate valuable high status pax if they are forced to walk back from row 3 to the back because the front pav is reserved for no-one. I would have thought they would want y pax to have a close look at the J cabin if there are no J pax - its a marketing opportunity!

 

[pauly7]

Well they are just all reading from a script - do we really expect Virgin staff to tailor that? Not really is my expectation, not really in that realm of service.

Funny about the rope thing - I've been on countless VA flights with completely empty J seats and they haven't put the rope on all bar one to my memory. Mixed experiences I guess

 

[toowongman]

1) Less cleaning up for the FAs. God forbid they have to put down "New Idea" and do something extra.
2) People milling about the J WC might park themselves in a J seat for a while, devaluing the cabin and ... annoying any high SC-holding flyers in Y
3) You use the facilities included in the cabin for which you're entitled.

 

[notzac]

Good. While it would be reasonable to allow pax to use the J toilet if there's no-one in J .. if you make an exception in one case, people start assuming exceptions can be made in other cases. Much better IMHO to have a standard, consistent policy (even if it seems slightly pointless on occasion).

 

[eastwest101]

1) Less cleaning up for the FAs. God forbid they have to put down "New Idea" and do something extra.
2) People milling about the J WC might park themselves in a J seat for a while, devaluing the cabin and ... annoying any high SC-holding flyers in Y
3) You use the facilities included in the cabin for which you're entitled.

These seem the likeliest explanations to me as well. They do read from the script and have heard the "will be serving meall and front toilet for J class guests only" spiel even with 0 pax in J class. I have often seen the rope put up when J class is empty, a couple of times I have seen it not put up to protect an empty J cabin but that is rare in my experience anyway. I strongly suspect the use of the rope is also to do with discouraging "self upgraders" and seems to be consistently and fairly rigorously enforced - as are the overhead bins in J class and PB, I think it may just be part of the training they do in VA. As a matter of fact the only common exception seems to be elderly or pax needing assistance from the cabin crew are sometimes escorted through the magnetic rope to the front J toilet.

 

[marki]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-things-airlines-wont-tell-you-2013-12-13


US centric but fits in with the discussion

 

[Mogul]

Seems lika a missed opportunity to upgrade some status pax even if was for the seat only.

 

[bullerdude]

Seems lika a missed opportunity to upgrade some status pax even if was for the seat only.

Whilst that would be lovely I don't think they want to devalue the product. Also, given the large amount of complaints aimed at VA's inconsistency, its not a bad thing that they keep business class separate as it means the same experience (of what you paid for) each flight.

 

[Blinky]

Add another vote for wanting one less toilet to clean.

 

[samas]

Interesting replies... It just seemed odd as there have been a few times I have flown on an aircraft with an empty J where they have omitted the spiel for the business guests.. When I asked the FA was expecting a response that it was a new procedure.

 

[iambents]

God forbid they have to put down "New Idea" and do something extra.

I hope you weren't at work at 11.13am when you posted this toowongman. God forbid you be surfing AFF when you could have been doing something extra

 

[fantasy86dj]

On my last VA flight SYD - MEL on a Sunday afternoon I was the only pax in business class (upgraded using that upgrade me), paid $200 for it (not bad to me). The rope went up so fast after the last pax boarded the plane.

They were making standard announcements about Business Class - I could not help to giggle though when the FA was saying passengers ......

On my flight up to SYD there was myself and 2 others in J but both ways Y was full flight...

 

[Kolo]

Add another vote for wanting one less toilet to clean.

But surely its the ground staff who clean toilets, so the FAs wouldn't be concerned, would they?

 

[iambents]

But surely its the ground staff who clean toilets, so the FAs wouldn't be concerned, would they?

I'd assume that might vary greatly on how long the flight was and where it turned around. Crew definitely have to clean and restock toilets on flights (people are gross - toilets would be horrible on your average flight if they didn't) and I'm assuming at least on some regional routes they clean the aircraft before the next leg because there is a ground crew to do it.

 

[ash.1111]

Most flights the cabin crew fully clean the cabin and toilets. Cleaners clean the J-class cabin and toilets on A330 flights, but the crew still clean the Y-class cabin fully.

Minus end of the night flights (those terminating), cabin crew basically do most of the cleaning on the 737/190s, just like Jetstar and Tiger. Yes, including after a red-eye (they do a basic clean of the cabin).