V-Flyer

I've been flying regularly with VS for 10years (Au 10 yrs) and I've never had anything like this delay. I was due home Friday at 7 am, its now saturday morning and I wont be home till Sunday at 9.30 am. Thanks VS for ruining my weekend. v(

My reason for posting it here rather than a trip report is to ask a few general questions of forum members (i've not posted for years).

1 hr into a smooth flight from Dulles there is s short series of 3 'bumps', harder than turbulence but not dramatic. Not something I've felt before. 20 mins later the captain announces that we are dumping fuel and landing at Logan to investigate the cause, possibly loose baggage? At logan nothing amiss is found but the flight will terminate as it needs a deeper safety inspection. OK top marks to VS for taking it seriously. y) We will go to hotels, its drizzling (typical Boston) and most of the taxis won't take vouchers so a bit chaotic. End up about 15 miles outside Boston in a 'country club' style sheraton. Cancel stuff friday, tell everyone I should be back sat am so plans (meeting friends, theatre etc) OK.

Fri am text from VA. We are currently examining the flight data from the aircraft and awaiting approval from Airbus and Engineers before we can depart. We can confirm that your departure WILL NOT be before 10pm 24Jun.

- I ring the Au line and am told that if I want to get on another flight I have to check out, get a cab 30 mins back to the airport and try and sort it there. Given I have lots of work to catch up on I decide to wait and see. However this is not very helpful and frankly I would expect not to have the buck passed straight back to me. n(

Update at 1.We are very sorry to advise the aircraft cannot be made serviceable anytime soon and with very limited availability out of any East Coast airport today or tomorrow we are sending another aircraft from the UK to Boston to collect you. You will depart Boston on VS122 at 10pm on Sat 25Jun. So thats the weekend lost.... B) B)

So questions:
1. What could be so badly wrong with 'Surfer Girl' that she can't be made serviceable after three little 'bumps'? Makes me worry about flying the A340-600.
2. Thumbs up for VS communication and the hotel, but I do feel they have used this to put up barriers to people insisting on rebooking. Several people have used company credit cards to book on available flights (inc via Montreal) and get home yesterday. I'm just an academic flying on an invited speaker ticket and I don't want to take the risk of paying for an extra flight. So I feel trapped. Why can't VS offer alternatives over the phone to people ringing the Au line? What is other's experience of this?
3. OK they are sending a plane over for us, but at an additional delay of 24 hours. Why didn't they send it yesterday.... ?|

To add to that its cold and very wet here and I know the weather's great back home in London... :#

I'm sorry you're having a bad time. But, wouldn't you rather fly safely with some delay then them risk killing a whole plane full of passengers and crew?

Miss G wrote:I'm sorry you're having a bad time. But, wouldn't you rather fly safely with some delay then them risk killing a whole plane full of passengers and crew?

Sorry but have to agree with this post.


However, I'm slightly surprised it's taking so long for a replacement aircraft to be sent but at least VS seem to be keeping the pax updated.


I'd prefer to be stuck in Boston rather than having an experience mid Atlantic like the Air France A330 a couple of years ago................... y)

Sorry I thought I'd made it clear that I had no complaints at all about taking a safety first approach, I and I thought I had made that perfectly clear in my post......

My query is why it takes two days to get a alternative a/c out here, and why they make trying to change carrier so difficult??

DelaneyB wrote:Sorry I thought I'd made it clear that I had no complaints at all about taking a safety first approach, I and I thought I had made that perfectly clear in my post......

My query is why it takes two days to get a alternative a/c out here, and why they make trying to change carrier so difficult??

Hello, and welcome (or welcome back?) to V-flyer. I think you were clear in your original post that they made the right call on safety grounds.

It looks like one of those situations where the service recovery has slipped by degrees, ultimately leading to your two day delay which I also would find unacceptable.

In situations like this there are generally two ways to go. One is to put yourself in the hands of the carrier (and they are all similar so not singling out VS here), they will get you back home but in a way that minimises the impact on them. The other is to be proactive, get back to the airport, and push for alternatives like rerouting on another carrier.

You may be entitled to some compensation for your delay depending on what the cause of the cancellation was. You might want to have a look at this link.

Hope your flight back is uneventful.

Regards
R3dV

Maybe they thought the problem could be fixed, but then when it couldn't decided replacement a/c would be needed?
Must be very frustrating for you. We used to stay at that Sheraton Ferncroft hotel years ago - we used to call it 'The Shining' hotel after the movie. Run along one of the corridors and you'll see what I mean It is a bit out of the way though and you do feel cut off, especially if the weather is bad.
Sorry you've suffered such a bad delay,maybe someone else will be able to shed some more light on what happened?

I think the biggest issue with just sending a spare aircraft out, is that airlines do not generally have spare aircraft sitting around unless they are in either stored in the desert or being serviced in maintenance hangers. I can imagine that if an aircraft was send from the hanger, it would have to be made serviceable first. Either that or Virgins Ops department had to do some serious switching and merging of scheduling to get that spare aircraft out to you. Not only is it the beginning of the weekend but also a busy time of year and merging 2 already full flights together elsewhere to free up an aircraft for you must be one hell of a headache for them.

Not easy for either side I'm sure. I hope the weather has picked up for you at least. If it's any consolation, it's MISERABLE here in the UK!

DelaneyB - welcome to v flyer.

Sorry to hear, does sound like a bit of a nightmare.

I'd be very interested to find out what the issue with the aircraft was but I'm unsure we'll find out!

Fingers crossed all goes to plan for you tonight.

Taken from one of the above links I see that VS have stated this;

Compensation will not be offered if the cause of the cancellation is beyond the control of Virgin Atlantic, or for cancellations which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. This includes, the impact of weather conditions or air traffic management decisions, national disasters, technical faults with the aircraft that may affect its safety, industrial disputes, political instability and security risks.

I was under the impression that a previous EC ruling forced airlines into compensating for technical faults with their aircrafts?

MrSquare wrote:Taken from one of the above links I see that VS have stated this;

Compensation will not be offered if the cause of the cancellation is beyond the control of Virgin Atlantic, or for cancellations which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. This includes, the impact of weather conditions or air traffic management decisions, national disasters, technical faults with the aircraft that may affect its safety, industrial disputes, political instability and security risks.

I was under the impression that a previous EC ruling forced airlines into compensating for technical faults with their aircrafts?

It is currently infront of the European Court to determine what a 'technical fault' actually means.

Thanks guys for comments. Weather has dried up and I'm sitting in Quincys Market with a Sam Adams and a crab cake. I suppose I shouldn't complain. Shame I missed a really good play at the young vic tonight though.

Looking at the Aircraft database here it looks like G-VWEB returned to Heathrow on the 23rd, though hasn't moved since.

Must have been a heavy load too - they sent a 744 (Lady Penelope (G-FAB). Combined flights?

There have been inflight upsets with Airbus in the past such as this so VIR have every reason to be extremely careful over this.

downhillski1 wrote:Must have been a heavy load too - they sent a 744 (Lady Penelope (G-FAB). Combined flights?

I think that V-FAB was the scheduled flight from BOS. 747s have been servicing this route since early this month.

Status updates yesterday showed V-WEB went out as VS 121 to BOS and left as VS22 just after midnight with an ETA of 11:07am

ccarmock wrote:Looking at the Aircraft database here it looks like G-VWEB returned to Heathrow on the 23rd, though hasn't moved since.

G-VWEB would have left IAD on the 22nd not the 23rd

DelaneyB wrote:Thanks guys for comments. Weather has dried up and I'm sitting in Quincys Market with a Sam Adams and a crab cake. I suppose I shouldn't complain. Shame I missed a really good play at the young vic tonight though.

I'd complain like hell for such a delay and push very hard to be reflighted. In the event you're probably back now, but such a delay is inexcusable when there are many options to be considered. I'll be interested to hear how VS handled things.

Bill wrote:There have been inflight upsets with Airbus in the past such as this so VIR have every reason to be extremely careful over this.

Why, Bill, you throw this out is beyond me. There have been incidents on A330s, none reported on 343s or 346s of a similar nature. Nor is there any reason to link what happened on this VS flight to those other incidents.

Bill S wrote:There have been inflight upsets with Airbus in the past such as this so VIR have every reason to be extremely careful over this.

What does that actually mean? In laymans terms please! Posting such techy stuff (for an incident that took place over 2 years ago) really dosen't help the vast majority of people on here and will only cause anxiety.

Is this really anything related to what happned the 22

The OP reported there were 3 bumps. He did not report any damage in the cabin or injuries to pax.

I'm sure if either had occured on the 22 he would have said so.

1 hr into a smooth flight from Dulles there is s short series of 3 'bumps', harder than turbulence but not dramatic. Not something I've felt before.

A series of hard bumps that are not due to air movement (turbulence) are likely to be because the aircraft control surfaces have moved.
Moved without command from the pilot.

If it were simply baggage moving about there would be no long delay.

So that suggests the Inertial Reference Unit or ADIRU.

There has been anomalous behaviour of ADIRUs in the past - not just in Airbii but also in B777. ADIRUs are used in all FBW aircraft including the A346 & A343s. QF72 was an extreme form - but there have been similar failures - so absolutely correct that VS play safe on this one - they might be comparatively little bumps but they need the same level of investigation if there is no other obvious cause found. The crew may well have had fault messages as well.

VIR would not dump fuel, divert, investigate without finding any obvious cause, keep pax sitting in hotels, fly out a replacement aircraft, fly the actual aircraft back empty (no doubt with very careful monitoring) then keep it on the ground for further investigations unless they were taking this very seriously indeed and rightly so imho.

Bill S wrote:

1 hr into a smooth flight from Dulles there is s short series of 3 'bumps', harder than turbulence but not dramatic. Not something I've felt before.

A series of hard bumps that are not due to air movement (turbulence) are likely to be because the aircraft control surfaces have moved.
Moved without command from the pilot.

If it were simply baggage moving about there would be no long delay.

So that suggests the Inertial Reference Unit or ADIRU.

There has been anomalous behaviour of ADIRUs in the past - not just in Airbii but also in B777. ADIRUs are used in all FBW aircraft including the A346 & A343s. QF72 was an extreme form - but there have been similar failures - so absolutely correct that VS play safe on this one - they might be comparatively little bumps but they need the same level of investigation if there is no other obvious cause found. The crew may well have had fault messages as well.

VIR would not dump fuel, divert, investigate without finding any obvious cause, keep pax sitting in hotels, fly out a replacement aircraft, fly the actual aircraft back empty (no doubt with very careful monitoring) then keep it on the ground for further investigations unless they were taking this very seriously indeed and rightly so imho.

Still Bill, I have to agree with the previous comments, it was a very odd thing to just link too (esp. as I am one of the nervous flyers on the forum).

How many flights to these Airbuses perform everyday in comparison to these 'issues'?

b.t.w its not true that Surfer girl is back in London.
Last night she was still in Boston, we taxied past her, with the lights on and 'engineers working' apparently at midnight on saturday.

DelaneyB wrote:b.t.w its not true that Surfer girl is back in London.
Last night she was still in Boston, we taxied past her, with the lights on and 'engineers working' apparently at midnight on saturday.

According to the Status Updates (which are a direct feed from Virgin Atlantic) Surfer Girl (G-VWEB) flew out from London on the 25th and returned today as VS 122

In the aircraft database it is showing as the following for Surfer Girl
Flight Route Date Dep Arr
VS022 BOS-LHR 2011-06-23 04:09 10:13
VS022 IAD-BOS 2011-06-23 23:00 01:00
VS022 IAD-LHR 2011-06-23 23:00 05:24

So according to this she is now back in blighty and has been for a few days.

She does get about a bit !

Well G-VWEB was still stuck in BOS on the evening of the 24th so the database is incorrect

Yes incorrect and VS122 was the extra flight back from Boston I was on and it was NOT G-VWEB which was still in Boston on the night of the 25th

The site here shows anticipated movements too. Obviously it was planned to fly it but then things changed. When G-VELD flew to Man the database showed the return LHR flight about a week in advance