Yada Yada
Established Member
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2004
- Posts
- 1,875
Hi forum,
It's been a long time since I last posted... about 4 years. After nearly burning out in my last job, which involved flying at least once a week and often more, I quit and took a few months off. The new job I took on required no travel... bliss! Until now.
I was asked to travel to our company's US office to help start a project and it had to be before Xmas because of some prior commitments I have in January. So when tickets were booked just days ahead and with the return flights just a few days before Xmas, few options were available at a reasonable price. Best I could get was premium economy for the main flight SYD-LAX and the rest including the return from LAX was all in regular economy. QF wanted top price so we went with Virgin.
Those who have been on these forums for some time will remember me being an advocate for Virgin Blue. I always found their service great - the cabin crew happy, friendly, relaxed yet professional, the paid-for food a lot better quality than the 'free' meals on QF, the seat pitch a bit better, and fast load/unloading through both doors made life easy. By comparison I found QF staff generally unhappy looking and grumpy, stuffy, and the food and plane interiors wanting. For the business and first class flights QF was always good, no complaints. In Y, DJ in my opinion was way better.
So to the point of my post... what's happened to VA/DJ? They've morphed into QF! On both international and domestic flights I found the crew to be somewhat curt, never smiling unless talking amongst themselves, and a few had the trademark cat's-bum mouth I used to see on QF. They were not friendly and made me feel like they were doing me a big favour when I asked for something. Did this come with the new stuffy-looking uniforms?
If this is what JB has brought to the company I don't like it. I'm happy that they are competing with QF by providing business class and now have more tie-ins with other airlines. But to change the crew culture so much has thrown away a key differentiating factor that is part of the Virgin brand. Surely RB cannot like this? If VA/DJ is identical to QF then I don't really care who I fly with.
It's been a long time since I last posted... about 4 years. After nearly burning out in my last job, which involved flying at least once a week and often more, I quit and took a few months off. The new job I took on required no travel... bliss! Until now.
I was asked to travel to our company's US office to help start a project and it had to be before Xmas because of some prior commitments I have in January. So when tickets were booked just days ahead and with the return flights just a few days before Xmas, few options were available at a reasonable price. Best I could get was premium economy for the main flight SYD-LAX and the rest including the return from LAX was all in regular economy. QF wanted top price so we went with Virgin.
Those who have been on these forums for some time will remember me being an advocate for Virgin Blue. I always found their service great - the cabin crew happy, friendly, relaxed yet professional, the paid-for food a lot better quality than the 'free' meals on QF, the seat pitch a bit better, and fast load/unloading through both doors made life easy. By comparison I found QF staff generally unhappy looking and grumpy, stuffy, and the food and plane interiors wanting. For the business and first class flights QF was always good, no complaints. In Y, DJ in my opinion was way better.
So to the point of my post... what's happened to VA/DJ? They've morphed into QF! On both international and domestic flights I found the crew to be somewhat curt, never smiling unless talking amongst themselves, and a few had the trademark cat's-bum mouth I used to see on QF. They were not friendly and made me feel like they were doing me a big favour when I asked for something. Did this come with the new stuffy-looking uniforms?
If this is what JB has brought to the company I don't like it. I'm happy that they are competing with QF by providing business class and now have more tie-ins with other airlines. But to change the crew culture so much has thrown away a key differentiating factor that is part of the Virgin brand. Surely RB cannot like this? If VA/DJ is identical to QF then I don't really care who I fly with.