Inside Virgin Australia’s 10 hour hostage crisis

Hi I want to create some content for my new business and need something to write about desperately. I got delayed for a few hours on a flight recently. The airline put passenger safety first and decided not to fly. They told us in the lounge and it was clear to everyone what was happening but they still didn’t announce it over the PA system. I know it’s a stretch to write about, and I also know that I will be doing my chances of working with this, or any other airline no good, but I really need some content and everyone loves a good airline bashing. Should I do it?

Why do airlines always act like a delay is a surprise? Where’s the planning for everyday disruptions? Should be simple but I don’t think anyone has just thought through the whole experience.

Ashton you hit it on the head. It’s not the airlines fault in first instance but if customer service had just framed it differently and were proactive in getting news/ assisting the customer with the little things, it would go a long way for the brand image of EVERY airline. Lessons to be learnt for all brands.

What’s that saying? ‘You get more bees with honey than vinegar’.

Yet another epic customer service fail by an airline. I’m not surprised; this is such a common story, not only relevant to the operations of Virgin but many airlines who seemingly believe they are invincible.

Sorry goes a long way, even if the situation is out of your hands.

…”a complete absence of urgency in boarding.”

The aircraft would have been assigned a slot and a pushback time and rushing the boarding would have made zero difference to the cancellation outcome there…..the plane goes when the pilots are ready and the slot is open, not just when the pax are seated.

‘we’re waiting for an update’ with the ground crew, air crew and booking line not seeming to know what each other were doing”

They are at the mercy of Airservices as they, QF and every other airline tries to get new slots, as Ops tries to find planes (that probably can’t get in as landings cancelled too and planes are scattered everywhere), as bookings gets overwhelmed etc. Perfect storm in a lot of ways.

But yes the overall experience sounds very underwhelming. A little bit of communication goes a long way, even if it’s just reassurance that they’re trying.

Hopefully a lesson learned, thanks for taking the time to speak out Ashton! WOM always goes such a long way and bad experiences never go unnoticed! A bit shocking coming from a company that preaches regularly about customer experiences – sounds like its time they practice what they preach.

Ash,

Good article with some sage advice. And while many won’t agree, I think many will. But most importantly of all, your article, at a minimum, poses some intelligent and poignant questions that every brand marketer should be prepared for.

I think provoking the comms community to intelligently debate the pros and cons of proactive brand behaviour in such circumstances will only get all agents and clients to better places.

Keep up the thoughtful articles and hopefully we’ll see some equally thoughtful and constructive community debate.

Nice one and thanks.

Great lessons Ashton.

Sadly oligopolies have never been known for more than platitude when it comes to customer experience. Virgin Australia doesn’t operate in the same the competitive environment that Virgin Atlantic does and has no real imperative to change. Fascinating that other closely related parts of the value chain (hotels in particular) worked it out over half a century ago, but again they have a totally different competitive impetus to walk the talk…

I fly a lot myself and have had many wonderful customer experiences, but they’ve almost always resulted from the passion of the great people that work for airlines, not the structure and process around them.

Experiences like Ashton’s form lifelong opinions they always fall back on unless they are changed by a similar situation in the future, IF they even get the chance. Shame they didn’t take the time to help instead of leaving people stranded.

It’s a shame this is a story heard all too often with budget airlines.
They should take their customer service more seriously.

A few years ago I was flying Adelaide to Singapore on Singapore Airlines and the entertainment system refused to work. There were numerous announcements and obvious efforts to fix the problem to no avail. Passengers understood and managed to amuse themselves for the duration. On arrival at Singapore, we deplaned and were met by an army of SIA employees who handed every passenger a leather travel wallet as compensation. I think we all understood that technical problems happen and we weren’t expecting compensation, but since then, I have always flown Singapore when possible.

In contrast, I was flying Sydney-Nadi by Virgin recently and the aircraft became unserviceable. Virgin staff stood around amusing themselves, unable or unwilling to let us know what was going on. Once we became airborne on the replacement aircraft, the captain was the only Virgin employee who apologised and explained what had happened. I like to fly with you Virgin, but you are testing my patience!

I was at Melbourne airport that afternoon and, although not flying to Brisbane, knew every single change to every departure time, gate change and redirect to all Brisbane and Sydney flights for the entire four hours I was in the airport, and the reasons. The announcements didn’t stop however when my flight to Adelaide was delayed, it wasn’t announced until well after we were due to board and by the lack of a plane at the end of the walkway, we had pretty much worked it out.

It doesn’t sound like they have learned anything at all, we stopped using Virgin Australia as a preferred domestic air provider due to their service ‘fails’ between Melbourne and Sydney about 8 years ago. Delays and cancellations happen – and are already stressful enough to the travelling public but the way these issues are handled (mishandled) resonate for years after the experience. One has a lot of time to ‘stew’ and ‘hate’ when left in an info vacuum.

A good description of what happened as far as I have heard. My 75 year old mother was on that flight having sat since 1pm for a flight that never happened, again with next to no communications to the passengers. She and many others spent the night sitting upright in the terminal, no check in to a hotel, just a long wait plus an $8 food voucher. So hers was a 19 hour wait at Brisbane airport, inside the terminal and inside a plane as you decribed.
Lets hope Virgin has learnt lessons.

Virgin Australia have been the bane of my existence over the last fortnight. I had a number of flights within the US which received a number of schedule changes from booking to actually taking the flights, like, I’m talking loads. My partner and I spent about 4 hours at check in desks over the course of the trip waiting for helpful US based staff to call Australia for permission from Virgin (and Best Flights) to release the seats and provide us with our boarding passes. And Virgin said no. So through no fault of our own, our flights were changed and our plans upset and when US staff tried to help us by rebooking us onto new flights, Virgin wouldn’t allow it. Apparently the only airlines that block on the spot issuing of tickets are China A/L and Virgin. Best Flights also added an extra layer of bureauocracy and obstacle. Don’t think I will be booking through a third party again and doubt I would choose Virgin for overseas travel.

Related to this is another customer service debacle, ironically from Brisbane again – this time on Sunday 10 November. After standing in a luggage drop off queue for an hour I missed my flight. Apparently it was my fault for not listening hard enough because they had a person calling out for people on my flight to come to the front of the queue. Then they sent me to the service desk to reschedule for another flight after telling me that they had people calling out so I should have heard, then sent me to the end of the queue to line up for another period of time (by the length of the queue, possibly another hour!) to get my luggage checked in. Needless to say I declined to do this.
It seems it was my fault for not listening.
What customer service?

VIrgin don’t learn. they turned a 3.5 hr journey from Auckland to Adelaide into an 18hr journey via Brisbane and Melbourne. Great fun with a 9month old baby and dwindling food and nappy supplies. 11 year old got to spend his whole birthday travelling/waiting to travel.
In Brisbane we got blamed for being last off the plane and missing the inter-terminal train, resulting in more delays and lost luggage. This despite the ‘guide’ not checking for us, making an announcement or seeing if we were ok.
That was 2008. Doesn’t seem like any lessons have been learned.
After flying with them, I’m definitely not a virgin anymore. not with they way they ‘f’d’ us.
Oh and then wait 3 days for lost luggage to get to Adelaide from Perth – including all baby related items, so we had to buy more while waiting. No refund, no apology. No class.

No wonder they couldn’t get the plane off the ground … with all those ‘isles’ in it, it must have been heavy.

I only fly Virgin because I’m forced to, by our company policy. I find their customer service appalling, with snooty staff who look down their noses at you, and apparently wouldn’t recognise real customer service if it bit them. A couple of weeks ago, I had to fly to Sydney for a meeting. I also had to go to a function back in Brisbane that night. I made sure I only had hand luggage, and booked a seat at the front of the plane, so I could get away fast.

By the time I boarded, there was absolutely no room in the overhead locker, and my bag would not go under the seat in front of me, because there wasn’t one. I politely asked the hostess for assistance to stow my bag. She literally rolled her eyes at me, as if this was some kind of deliberate naughtiness on my part. She pretty much snatched the bag and looked as though she was heading to the rear of the plane with it. I said (still very, very polite) – “excuse me, I’m really sorry, but could you please not put it down the back, I’ve deliberately booked this seat because I really, really need to get off fast, I’ve got to get to a function in Brisbane.”

I then pointed to a totally empty luggage bin two seats in front of mine and said “can you please not put it there?”. Her reply – in a sneering tone – “No, that’s BUSINESS CLASS!”.

Me (possibly slightly less politely this time) : “I can assure you that my bag will not want to use the business class lavatory, ask for any business class food or drink, or even have the temerity to take a single breath of BUSINESS CLASS air!” People around me laughed. A business man, sitting in BUSINESS CLASS! said “give it to me, I’ll put it up here”.

Ms Snooty : “Our CEO has told us that we can’t put ANYTHING from economy into BUSINESS CLASS!”.

Off went my bag to the very back of the plane. I got off last, she made sure of that. I was late for my function. This is just one example of a raft of issues I’ve had with ’em. Muppets. Undertrained, overly up themselves, muppets. I will never, ever willingly fly Virgin again, and will also make damn sure if it’s ever in my power, that the company switches back to Qantas as fast as possible.

Didn’t they just recently announce a large loss? Might I be so bold as to suggest it’s because the CEO is not really focussed on the big, strategic issues? According to the hostie, he’s worried your economy type bag might make it into business class………………I look forward to reading about a larger loss next year……

1st world problems… Seriously listen to yourselves.

…and yet I bet none of you voted for the Super Fast Train Party in the senate.

I’ve had a (relatively) short delay to thunderstorms at Nadi when flying with Virgin. Both the airline and airport staff dud a good job keeping us informed and Blind Freddie could see that the weather was cr#ppy.

I’m kinda with Step Back on this one.

I admit I didn’t Blutack, but in my defence – they weren’t on the ballot in my state.

Well said. Customer service in this country needs a shake up and not just the airlines. The companies that get that this is a marketing function will prosper

Dave, they might be first world problems, but this is the world we live in. We are paying first world prices, so how about a bit of first world custormer service?

Had our flight cancelled by Virgin four weeks ago at five minutes notice – pilot sick!!!! Nearly 24 hours later final got home. Still no apology. Still no reimbursement of upgrade costs…no [phone number to call…only an answer machine. An absolute crock of Sh*t. Always been a big fan and supporter of Virgin but this has left me a grade A detractor. Virgin customer service does not even exist!

Obviously you need to work in Airline ops.. you seem to know more than those that actually do the job..

Leave the job of that to people who have more experience than you!

“The question is this: as soon as the flight was cancelled why didn’t crew walk down the isles with a piece of paper that explained what was going on, how to check your flight and here’s a few hotels to call with a deal for being a valued customer. No. Nothing.”

One reason the crew didn’t walk down the aisles (not ‘isles’) with said pieces of paper might be that planes generally don’t have laser printers..?

If I was in a lounge and heard that announcement about not being out in the rain, I’d hunt you down. That is the most ridiculous suggestion I’ve heard in a long time. If I wasn’t in the lounge I wouldn’t be in the rain anyway, as I’m not an utter imbecile.

That’s not to say they couldn’t improve many of the other points.

I was on Virgin flight from Melbourne to Sydney at the time when the reservation system crashed and despite the obvious delays and problems that caused, I found the reaction and service from Virgin staff to be fantastic. They were well drilled in the process and informative all the way through. In fact, the lounge became overcrowded then as well and they had to turn away loyalty customers but they summoned as many staff members as they could to come to the lounge and hand out complimentary food and drink vouchers to everyone being turned away from the lounge so they could use anywhere else in the terminal or on the flight. In amongst the chaos, I found the Melbourne Virgin staff to be great – and that takes a lot for a Sydney-sider to say 🙂