Virgin Atlantic – A con on me

This is most definitely a first world problem post and more so an open letter review to Virgin Atlantic as opposed to an article for feedback. I haven’t bothered emailing Virgin Atlantic customer service anymore since they have really slow response times, and on a previous attempt they didn’t even get my name and flight details correct.

Right now (10/02/2016) I am around 37,000 ft on my way from London (LHR) to Hong Kong (HKG) on a Virgin Atlantic transatlantic flight. As with most frequent travellers, my choice in airline has largely been dictated by my accumulation of frequent flyer points, which in my case led me to become a loyal customer to Virgin Atlantic. However, my recent couple of flights with them have made me reconsider who I fly with from now on.

Brief History

Since childhood, I have been fortunate to fly on Virgin Atlantic a fair few times, and have always associated the brand as being cool maverick within the world of transatlantic flight. This inferred coolness primarily came from their marketing, and reinforced by their entrepreneurial founder Richard Branson, who I was taught about during my college and university years. Even though I was flying ‘Economy', it never felt like Economy, and I always thought the service was amazing. I would have gone as far to say, Virgin Atlantic to me was the Apple of the airline industry, but in recent years it’s fallen short of the wonder and warmth it had instilled into me as a kid. Just another airline with a big marketing budget, but mediocre service.

Recent Flights

On my recent flights, I have been fortunate enough to upgrade myself to their ‘Premium Economy’ offering. For around £300 extra you get some supposed ‘Premium’ benefits, namely extra leg room, knives and folks with your meal (if you got one, more on this later), and the perceived benefit of priority check-in (I mean the plane doesn’t leave any quicker!). For someone coming from Economy class, it’s definitely a lot better, but the extra expense becomes harder to swallow because the customer service doesn’t necessarily become premium. Fancy ‘Herschel’ bags with same Economy toiletries, combined with the welcome drinks including the same juices from concentrate aren’t really worth the upgrade. But if it’s not the material benefits, then that surely just leaves the customer service as the key differentiator, right?

Customer Service

Before boarding today’s flight, I decided to slowly sync my body-clock to the Hong Kong timezone. Usually something I do on the day of the flight by forcefully staying awake during what would be morning in the country I’m flying to. However, on this occasion, I decided to slowly do it over several days, meaning by the time I boarded my 8pm UK flight, I would have fallen asleep as it would be 4am in Hong Kong. On falling asleep, I assumed the stewardesses would have at least woken me up for the one main meal of the long 11 hour flight. Now, I know this is a catch-22 since they don’t want to disturb the individual, but I believe it’s more important to ensure your customer has something nutritional to sustain them over such a long flight. The plan was to eat the food and then try get back to sleep as soon as possible. Only one problem, they didn’t wake me up.

I got up several hours later, and naively thought they would simply warm some food up for me. In addition, since the flight wasn’t completely full, I also assumed there would be food left over, but it apparently wasn’t the case. The staff told me for hygiene reasons they couldn’t reheat food, which for health and safety is fair. However, I only wanted the vegetarian pasta dish, which I’m sure could have been eaten cold. After some discussion with her colleague, they paused and told me they had ran out. I found this very hard to believe and started to become annoyed. Her solution to the problem, on an 11 hour “Premium Economy” flight was to have some biscuits and crisps. If you’re privileged enough to be reading this, I’m sure you also know biscuits and crisps are neither nutritional, nor sufficient to satisfy someone on a long haul flight. After some further discussion with her colleague, they managed to get me some starter salad pots (4 in total) from, you guessed it, ‘Economy’. She further apologised for not waking me up and went on to confirm breakfast would be in 3-4 hours. Now I’m not completely sure what’s behind the magic curtain leading to ‘Upper Class’, note it’s not called ‘Upper Economy’, but in my opinion she should have went there instead of economy to appease an unhappy customer. I am adamant there would’ve been something warm available, but I had to suffice with 4 pots of cold noodle starter, a packet of crisps, a biscuit and some chocolate. A £300 upgrade to enjoy Economy salad, now that’s a premium con.

I later called for assistance on several occasions to dispose of the salad boxes and also to ask for some green tea, but she didn’t seem happy. Her lacklustre face slowly became an annoyed glare.

The only conciliation was that I managed to catch the attention of her colleague who was working in Upper Class. She said she could warm up a breakfast for me even though it wasn’t scheduled for another 2 hours. I took up the offer and was grateful.

While waiting for the breakfast to warm up, I made passing conversation about the problem that occurred. She confirmed Economy and Premium Economy passengers don’t get the option of when they eat.

“It’s not like Upper Class where they can choose when they want to eat” she said.

This is fine and I’m not angry at their operating policies, but what I am annoyed about is that knowing this fact, they didn’t wake me up. Furthermore, after apologising for their mistake, they didn’t attempt to provide a one-off hot meal from Upper Class, but instead offered cold salad from Economy.

This is not the customer service I remember or expected from Virgin Atlantic. It’s more painful since I paid hard earned money for the one way upgrade that actually made the whole experience worse, rather than improving it. I understand it’s not ‘Upper Class’, but the price tag and associated benefits would make you think it’s closer to ‘Upper’ than ‘Economy’. In hindsight I wish I never bothered with the upgrade and don’t think I ever will. The once cool Virgin brand with it’s finger on the pulse has turned into another lifeless corporation. No longer having any hunger to please or surpass their customers’ needs. The cliché sentence blurbed during the opening few announcements - “Please let us know if there is anything we can do to make your flight more enjoyable” - is said in vain. On my previous Premium Economy experience, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. But since this is the second time something like this has happened, I will definitely be taking my business elsewhere, regardless of my frequent flyer points. If the customer service isn’t there, then there is no point. It might be Virgin in name, but it definitely shouldn’t be a virgin to customer service.