Virgin Rant

The two major airlines offering domestic flights in Australia are Qantas and Virgin Blue. Our previous domestic flights were operated by Qantas, but this one was operated by Virgin Blue. Virgin Blue, on average, is a little bit cheaper than Qantas and since this was the first time we’d fly with them, we were a bit excited. The only downside of Virgin is that the baggage allowance is only 23KG, instead of the handsome 32KG Qantas offers (or offered at that moment). As we sat in the taxi towards the airport, Yvo received a call announcing that the flight was delayed by seven and a half hours. Since we were almost at the airport anyway, we decided that we would try our luck at the counter to get a little bit more information. Upon arrival at the airport, the Virgin counter was closed and no Virgin employee was in sight. After 20 minutes quite a few people had accumulated around the Virgin counter where we had to explain to everyone that the flight was delayed, since we, apparently, were the only ones that had even received a phone call. Another 10 minutes later a Virgin representative finally showed up, telling us that there was no other information and that we all would have to wait until the evening. As we spoke with the Virgin employee at the check-in desk, it became clear that we were not booked on the flight that evening and we had to go through some trouble to get that fixed. Too make matters, ehm, more interesting, we couldn’t leave our baggage anywhere, so we had to carry those heavy cases around for seven hours while waiting for the flight.

Our flight from Helsinki to Beijing was delayed by three hours and Finnair was nice enough to supply every passenger with a 17.5 Euro coupon to spend at the airport, just to make up for the wasted time. The flight from Broome to Perth was delayed by more than seven hours and we didn’t even got an apology from Virgin.

We walked around Broome with our suitcases, desperately searching for a bar or cafe that was open, but because it was a Sunday afternoon, almost everything was closed. Virgin offers the option to buy a seat in a ‘blue zone’, which is more expensive, but will have a bit more leg room. Because we’re not the shortest people on earth, we bought the blue zone seats, but when it was finally time to board the plane, it became apparent that something had gone wrong with the seat assignments. There were already people in our seats and the, ever so friendly, stewardess told us that we would have to settle for a normal seat. Yvo’s eye twitched for a moment as he stood up from our temporary seat and started to, let’s say, ‘explain’ that this was not acceptable. A minute or so later, the people in seats 1A and 1B were evicted and relocated to our intended non blue zone seats, while we were relaxing in their old seats. Drinks and food were not complimentary, despite the long wait, but we were on front row and well on our way to Perth. Finally.