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#940172 by Kraken
13 Dec 2017, 13:28
I fully agree with Joshl257's comments above. Virgin are giving their Manchester passengers a second rate product compared to flying out of London & it's about to get worse next year.

I can put up with the lack of a Clubhouse (for now) as I know there are space constraints in MAN T2 (i.e. no spare space for a CH) - but that will change in a year or two as the T2 expansion works progress. VS better have a Clubhouse on the cards for MAN as part of the T2 expansion plans! That said, does the journey to LHR or LGW from Nottinghamshire warrant itself for a few glasses of bubbly / Redheads & a Clubhouse burger? No, in my opinion.

Now the onboard product is another matter entirely. I generally only fly UC & more often than not on the MCO route, so I'm not affected (at the moment) by the A330-200's. The initial lack of PE is clearly going to annoy some passengers, as is evident on this thread - people having to downgrade / travel from London to get the PE product they want. I'll reserve judgement on the Business / Upper Class product on these aircraft for now. Some people do not like the UC suites - I personally like them & particularly like the fact it's a separate seat & mattress surface... but on the flip side I know some don't like the fact you have to get up to go from seat to lie-flat. The fact remains that the product on offer will not be the shiny Upper Class suite that Virgin have photographed extensively on their website.

Virgin are a small airline & should be able to manage their fleet better than they are doing. Ensure that any "new" aircraft are delivered to the fleet with the full VS product fitted to ensure passengers get consistent service & product offer. I would bet very good money that VS scheduling / operations will be under strict orders to ensure that these A330-200's never see the light of day on lucrative ex-LHR routes if at all possible.
#940179 by LREDI
13 Dec 2017, 15:41
Will very much depend on how much work VS put into these 332s. If they see them as forming part of the fleet in the future I would expect Wifi, new seat covers, carpets, lighting, PE and maybe even a refit of business into Upper, to the 333 standard. Otherwise, if we just get PE seats and everything else the same, very worrying and potentially damaging to the brand.

On the 789 topic, notice this week the 105/6 SEA has been cancelled due to operational reasons - a 789 flew out on the 105 earlier in week and didn't return until the day later - did it go tech? G-VSPY. Also issues out of HK with the 207 being cancelled due to again, operational issues.

A lot of sleepless nights at VHQ me thinks right now... Interested to see what RR come up with in terms of compensation, being in mind they have the VS contract for the 350 don't they?
#940182 by tugpilot
13 Dec 2017, 16:00
"Virgin are a small airline and should be able to mange the fleet better than they are doing". I just thought I would try to put this into context. There are around 500 affected engines and no new build ones available. The only thing to do is to refurbish turbine blades on the corrosion affected engines. Air New Zealand and ANA have grounded aircraft as well. The former have just leased in Portuguese A340 and A330, neither of which will be in ANZ configuration. The disruption will last for some time- many months at least. Virgin could try to insist that Rolls Royce build engines for them to sort this out rather than keep deliveries to newer customers for the 787 and 350 on track - but they wouldn't! Are you seriously suggesting that Virgin sholud protect Manchester as is and abandon routes like Shanghai, Jo'burg and Hong Kong from Heathrow for which no other suitable aircraft are available on the leasing market. They have already bought expenisive A340s back from storage , which burn almost twice as much fuel as a 787 to plug some of the gap. I am afraid if you want to have Vrgin at all, it must be able to make the best commercial decisions in a set of difficult and unforeseen circumstances. BA are cancelling flights and pretty much abandoned Manchester long ago for long haul.

Manchester has lighter loads and lower yields and is more self-contained in terms of number of crew needing to be trained. It may well be that there is a silver lining - these aricraft will be re-configured and would be very sutable for developing Manchester routes- they are smaller and have longer range and would be a good fit in the longer term.
#940190 by Sealink
13 Dec 2017, 19:43
Kraken wrote:I fully agree with Joshl257's comments above. Virgin are giving their Manchester passengers a second rate product compared to flying out of London & it's about to get worse next year.

I can put up with the lack of a Clubhouse (for now) as I know there are space constraints in MAN T2 (i.e. no spare space for a CH) - but that will change in a year or two as the T2 expansion works progress. VS better have a Clubhouse on the cards for MAN as part of the T2 expansion plans! That said, does the journey to LHR or LGW from Nottinghamshire warrant itself for a few glasses of bubbly / Redheads & a Clubhouse burger? No, in my opinion.

Now the onboard product is another matter entirely. I generally only fly UC & more often than not on the MCO route, so I'm not affected (at the moment) by the A330-200's. The initial lack of PE is clearly going to annoy some passengers, as is evident on this thread - people having to downgrade / travel from London to get the PE product they want. I'll reserve judgement on the Business / Upper Class product on these aircraft for now. Some people do not like the UC suites - I personally like them & particularly like the fact it's a separate seat & mattress surface... but on the flip side I know some don't like the fact you have to get up to go from seat to lie-flat. The fact remains that the product on offer will not be the shiny Upper Class suite that Virgin have photographed extensively on their website.

Virgin are a small airline & should be able to manage their fleet better than they are doing. Ensure that any "new" aircraft are delivered to the fleet with the full VS product fitted to ensure passengers get consistent service & product offer. I would bet very good money that VS scheduling / operations will be under strict orders to ensure that these A330-200's never see the light of day on lucrative ex-LHR routes if at all possible.


Virgin being a small airline means it is more difficult to manage their fleet when something like the Dreamliner engine issue occurs. The fact they are bringing in four aircraft shows a commitment surely?
And they will eventually be fitted with PE seats which indicates the scale of the Dreamliner problem.

Incidentally, when looking at the LHR VS experience, don’t forget to compare prices with MAN. Any flight comparison I have done has shown VS exMAN to be about £1k less than LHR.
#940191 by Sealink
13 Dec 2017, 19:49
deep_south wrote:On the brighter side, will the 4 extra frames open up opportunities for new/restored/ higher frequencies when the 787 engines are all sorted out? Or are they just on short-ish leases?


Initially one year but fitting PE later seems to indicate a longer lease.
#940195 by duggy83
13 Dec 2017, 20:49
See below for the seat map - seems to to confirm for now remaining in the 19 seat Air Berlin business class - with their old extra space seats being sold as extra leg room at the front of the economy section

Also had the Virgin registration applied at Shannon! https://www.flickr.com/photos/shanair/38276587314
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#940199 by Annab14$
13 Dec 2017, 22:01
I'm booked to fly out upper to FLL via Atlanta in June so I'm expecting the seat map to change shortly to the ex air Berlin config, my main concern is that we are due to come back in PE via JFK. looking at the below the Man / JFK flight isn't mentioned as being impacted in July and having done a dummy booking the PE segment is still available. I am kicking myself as the Upper return was only another £400 each at the time I booked but is now a lot more. I have the concern that we will be downgraded. Is the below list likely to extend to include the JFK route does anyone have any idea? Apologies this is probably a how long is a piece of string question.


mitchja wrote:Further update today now also impacting LGW routes and more MAN routes:

we need to let you know about a few more changes to our flying programme because of an industry-wide supply issue with the Rolls Royce engines we use on our Boeing 787 Dreamliners.

While some of these aircraft are temporarily parked, we’ve been working to make sure our customers’ travel plans can continue with certainty and in comfort. To support this, we intend to add four A330-200 aircraft to our fleet – they’ll be Virgin Atlantic aircraft, operated by our own pilots and world class cabin crew, delivering our own service and experience:

VS 29 / 30 15 May 2018 to 31 July 2018 London Gatwick (LGW) to Barbados (BGI)

VS 33 / 34 15 May 2018 to 31 July 2018 London Gatwick (LGW) to Antigua (ANU)

VS 77 / 78 4 June 2018 to 30 July 2018 Manchester (MAN) to Barbados (BGI)

VS 89 / 90 18 May 2018 to 30 July 2018 London Gatwick (LGW) to St. Lucia (UVF)

VS 97 / 98 20 May 2018 to 29 July 2018 London Gatwick (LGW) to St. Lucia (UVF)

VS 109 / 110 DL* 4354 / 4355 01 June 2018 to 30 July 2018 Manchester (MAN) to Atlanta (ATL)

VS121 / 122 DL* 4343 / 4344 02 June 2018 to 28 July 2018 Manchester (MAN) to Boston (BOS)

VS125 / 126 DL* 4345 / 4346 01 June 2018 to 31 July 2018 Manchester (MAN) to San Francisco
#940204 by VS075
13 Dec 2017, 23:12
Joshl257 wrote:I don't get why they are going after A330 200's because it has fewer seats than the 300. Also the Air Berlin 330's have Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines that are not exactly the most fuel efficient.


A few points in response: -

The A332's in the Air Berlin config have 290 seats whilst the native VS A333's have 264 seats. I accept Air Berlin had a 2-class cabin and when they eventually get PE I expect that seat count to go down, but for now it's an increase in capacity.

It's a fair comment about the engines, but given the circumstances could it have been a case of that being towards the bottom of VS' considerations ahead of factors such as availability, condition and otherwise having commonality with the existing fleet which will mean no shelling out on crew training on a new aircraft type? I'm sure in an ideal world VS would have gone for 787-9's or even some more A330-300's with RR engines, but are there any available immediately in decent condition and particularly the 233t variety (bear in mind the earliest A333's were not as heavy and had shorter range compared to more recent builds and there's a 242t version that DL have taken delivery of)?

Another thing to bear in mind is that the MAN-SFO route must be one of the longest routes (if not the longest) VS use the A330-300 on and the extra range of the -200 might work out better, particularly during the winter months when headwinds are more likely.

Finally, another thing to point out is that in the early days of VS they operated 747-200's that were either RR or P&W-powered (admittedly all of these weren't factory new), so operating planes with different engine types isn't an alien concept even though it's not exactly ideal.
#940206 by LREDI
13 Dec 2017, 23:24
virginboy747 wrote:Saw posted elsewhere that they intend to have them for 4 years


If this is correct then its very interesting, that would tie in with when the final A350-1000s come on stream...

Also, I cannot see VS wanting to operate these for 4 years in their current config, particularly for Upper (given they were so quick to rip out to UCDS) so I would expect retrofitting to their A333 standard eventually. Would be interesting to see what the seat map for the A332 looks like once it has PE fitted, and also when the first 332 will go in for refit. My thinking is it will follow the final A333 being released from UC mods...
#940209 by NoPlaceLikeHome
14 Dec 2017, 08:31
mitchja wrote:Further update today now also impacting LGW routes and more MAN routes:

we need to let you know about a few more changes to our flying programme because of an industry-wide supply issue with the Rolls Royce engines we use on our Boeing 787 Dreamliners.

While some of these aircraft are temporarily parked, we’ve been working to make sure our customers’ travel plans can continue with certainty and in comfort. To support this, we intend to add four A330-200 aircraft to our fleet – they’ll be Virgin Atlantic aircraft, operated by our own pilots and world class cabin crew, delivering our own service and experience:

VS 29 / 30 15 May 2018 to 31 July 2018 London Gatwick (LGW) to Barbados (BGI)

VS 33 / 34 15 May 2018 to 31 July 2018 London Gatwick (LGW) to Antigua (ANU)

VS 77 / 78 4 June 2018 to 30 July 2018 Manchester (MAN) to Barbados (BGI)

VS 89 / 90 18 May 2018 to 30 July 2018 London Gatwick (LGW) to St. Lucia (UVF)

VS 97 / 98 20 May 2018 to 29 July 2018 London Gatwick (LGW) to St. Lucia (UVF)

VS 109 / 110 DL* 4354 / 4355 01 June 2018 to 30 July 2018 Manchester (MAN) to Atlanta (ATL)

VS121 / 122 DL* 4343 / 4344 02 June 2018 to 28 July 2018 Manchester (MAN) to Boston (BOS)

VS125 / 126 DL* 4345 / 4346 01 June 2018 to 31 July 2018 Manchester (MAN) to San Francisco




With the suggested changes to the above routes, has anybody who has a flight booked been contacted yet or when could we expect contact from Virgin.

We have flights booked in PE from LGW to Antigua in May and have not yet heard anything from Virgin. When I contacted virgin holidays to ask about any changes they have not heard anything (allegedly), but a rep from the Flying Club said “nothing confirmed, but likely”.
Whilst I appreciate that this is not the fault of Virgin, I don’t believe that they won’t have planned in advance for the flight changes.
#940220 by ScoobySu
15 Dec 2017, 23:43
I've had the emails today regarding my St Lucia flights in June ;-( ;-(
#940222 by NoPlaceLikeHome
16 Dec 2017, 00:16
After seeing the update on the Virgin Atlantic site this afternoon, phoned Virgin Holidays. They initially stated that our flights to Antigua in May were not affected. I asked them to check and they eventually phoned back. Both outbound and inbound flights have been changed.
The options they gave us were;
Cancel with full deposit back,
Move holiday dates,
Change destination,
Move to Economy, no guarantee of extra leg room and may have to pay extra to sit there. Refund 75% of difference between economy/premium. But they can’t tell me until Monday for some reason.

However, I thought the 75% refund was under EU law and was of your total flight cost?

If somebody who has already been downgraded, advice would be appreciated.
#940223 by LREDI
16 Dec 2017, 00:38
Your opinions according to the VS site:

Where possible we will move you into Extra Leg Rooms seats

In accordance with EU261/2004 we will refund you 75% of the cost of the affected leg of your flight. This can take up to 31 days to complete.

Alternatively, get in touch to do one of the following:

Fly Premium Economy to the same destination, but change your dates free of charge. Travel must be between January 1 and November 30 2018, and is subject to availability

Fly Premium Economy to the same destination on the same date from a different airport (such as London Heathrow or London Gatwick), free of charge and subject to availability

Fly Premium Economy on the same date via another airport, connecting to your final destination with one of our codeshare partners. Again, free of charge and subject to availability

Fly Premium Economy to an alternative Virgin Atlantic destination without a change fee, but subject to any difference in airfare
#940226 by Sealink
16 Dec 2017, 05:19
LREDI wrote:
virginboy747 wrote:Saw posted elsewhere that they intend to have them for 4 years


If this is correct then its very interesting, that would tie in with when the final A350-1000s come on stream...

Also, I cannot see VS wanting to operate these for 4 years in their current config, particularly for Upper (given they were so quick to rip out to UCDS) so I would expect retrofitting to their A333 standard eventually. Would be interesting to see what the seat map for the A332 looks like once it has PE fitted, and also when the first 332 will go in for refit. My thinking is it will follow the final A333 being released from UC mods...



VS are installing their product, with PE added later.
#940227 by spacedog
16 Dec 2017, 10:30
We fly PE from MAN on a regular basis, so this is indeed disappointing news.

What can be done about reward seats? We are flying to SFO in July and it looks like the reward seats I got for my sister and her fiance in PE will be affected. Can I get miles and taxes back if they have to fly in economy? I am sad about this as they were so excited about flying in PE for the first time.
#940239 by gumshoe
17 Dec 2017, 10:31
If you can bag one of the window seats I’d argue it’s better than any UC seat in terms of privacy and space.

Meanwhile an interesting - and slightly perplexing - story on headforpoints today, about a passenger booked in UC on a MAN-BGI flight in May, who was called by VS and told there’ll be no UC cabin on the flight and he’s been downgraded to PE.

The (very generous) compensation offer was a free UC return ticket to anywhere on the VS network, taxes included and valid for three years, or 100,000 miles.

What’s perplexing is why VS have said there’s no UC cabin on the flight. The A332s, we’re led to believe, have Business but no PE.

All I can think of is the aircraft’s changed from an A333 (with 31 UC seats) to an A332 (with 19) or a 747 (with 14) but if so a bit naughty of VS if they told the passenger there’s no UC, when he’s simply been downgraded due to overbooking.

One would hope VS didn’t forget to tell him he’s also eligible for a 75% refund of the leg in question under EC261/2004 if he’s been involuntarily downgraded .....
Last edited by gumshoe on 17 Dec 2017, 10:51, edited 2 times in total.
#940240 by Lucille
17 Dec 2017, 10:43
ScoobySu wrote:I've had the emails today regarding my St Lucia flights in June ;-( ;-(

We're going to Grenada in June (via St Lucia) and haven't heard a thing from Virgin.

Found out about the change when randomly doing a check on the booking yesterday. Quick bit of research whilst sitting in the pub after the match yesterday afternoon regarding Air Berlin's Business Class seats and selected two window seats, so not too much strife for us, however I do particularly feel for those wanting a VS PE service.
#940243 by Neil
17 Dec 2017, 12:06
We were booked PE to ATL next September using the AmEx vouchers, only because no reward seats to MCO have been released.

I phoned Virgin on Thursday and after a few conversations with the supervisor they swapped our flights to MCO even though there were still no miles seats available.

This is the perfect result for us, PE still ex MAN and the destination we really wanted but wasn’t able to book.
#940257 by djpetewilkes
17 Dec 2017, 21:43
This is quite disappointing. Back in July I had managed to get 7 return reward flights from LGW-BGI for half-term at the end of May (don't ask how, I'm not sure!). Have now got seats in rows 50 and 51, at the back of the A330-200.

Any idea how they will do the 75% refund? Will it be FC Miles, cash, or both?
#940267 by Restus
18 Dec 2017, 01:20
I'm booked in UC for MAN-BOS 6 June and JFK-MAN 13 June

Outgoing was A333 now changed to A332, luckily I still have a window seat! :-D
Incoming was 747 but that seems to have stayed the same. Fingers crossed it doesn't change as I haven't done UC on a 747 yet.

I'm actually looking forward to seeing what the Air Berlin design is like - I just hope Virgin have given it their personal touch by then...
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