Virgin on-time performance WORSE than Flyglobespan

Oh dear.
Now I know that VS have a lot more flights than FGS, but this is pretty poor performace figures don't you think?

http://www.flightontime.info/scheduled/scheduled.html

Pretty poor....much like the condition of the tyres on this plane...link
I'd rather be late personally...

Originally posted by NS
Pretty poor....much like the condition of the tyres on this plane...[url=http://www.v-flyer.com/forum/flyer_viewphoto.asp?photo_id=2835&airline=&aircraft=¨istration=&airport=&photographer=&keywords=&category=1&lastpos=10&fromsearch=yes]link[/url]
I'd rather be late personally...

Its not good against competative airlines, BA, etc, the fact its is worse than an airline which is pillioried on other forums is just awful on top.
The figures seem to be getting worse as well.

...Virgin always have "some last minute paperwork to complete before we're on our way"....??????????? I've never experienced this as much as when flying VS.....[n]

Originally posted by NS
...Virgin always have "some last minute paperwork to complete before we're on our way"....??????????? I've never experienced this as much as when flying VS.....[n]

This has also been my experence when flying from LGW always paperwork or an extra bag, head count wrong etc, are the LGW ground staff outsourced as it does not seem to be getting any better.

Originally posted by Gavin
This has also been my experence when flying from LGW always paperwork or an extra bag, head count wrong etc, are the LGW ground staff outsourced as it does not seem to be getting any better.

I think it's still Swissport UK (they acquired Groundstar about 3 years ago) who run the VS stations at LGW and MAN.

AFAIK, only Heathrow has VS employed check-in and airside staff (other than station management) these days - someone correct me if I'm wrong?

It might be no reflection on Swissport UK themselves, it might be more to do with delays from elsewhere in the VS operation such as load planning (which I think is outsourced?) or flight ops, or maybe regular occurrences of irregular ops. For instance, if there are only enough staff employed to get a certain number of planes away at once (let's say 2 for the sake of argument - it's probably more), the moment a delay means that three or more planes need boarding and dispatching at the same time, either the staff get spread more thinly, or there's a "knock on" delay as the third plane has to wait until one of the first two gets away, and so on.

Airline stations are fairly tightly staffed, even the big hubs. Small stations often have little room for manoeuvre (e.g. the person who checked you in a SFO is often the same person collecting your boarding pass at the gate, 2 hours later), and there's usually a bit more slack in the staffing the larger the station gets (because the probability of delayed flights increases).

Mike

Its interesting to look on that site at the breakdown of information for Virgin by airport

Obviously we should fly to Tokyo ...

Only when you look at it initially.
Now I look at FlyGlobespans delays in more detail, flights such as Orlando (sanford) are delayed an average of 77 minutes. Thats worse.
However, because they don;t have the frequency of VS, they therefore don't look so bad when you add them all up. If the flights were daily, well.
Not to say that this isn't bad, because it truly is, and I hope that VS sharpen up.

kev.