Virgin Australia

Perth to Melbourne. After a bad experience with Qantas (treated myself by booking a Business Class flat bed, got an old ex-Jetstar seat and no warning, apology or compensation), I chose Virgin on a recent trip to Melbourne. Ground staff were fine, I was a little surprised not to be asked for ID on either flight though. Cabin crew were friendly and professional. Cabin interior was acceptable, but could have been cleaner. Seats have the same pitch as Qantas, but somehow feel more like Jetstar (black leather included). Apparently they're going to be flying to Abu Dhabi in these aircraft, I hope they have a refit because while the seats are OK for 4 hours, I wouldn't like to spend 11 hours in them. IFE works well - can be used from gate to gate, and there's a much wider range of programs than are listed in the magazine. There was enough choice to sustain interest, but it definitely feels like it's not the A-list. Supplied headphones were awful, they sell "premium" earphones in the food menu, but I just used my own (bring a 2-pin adapter). I didn't notice any under-seat metal boxes housing the IFE equipment, that's definitely a positive. On flights to and from Perth they provide a hot meal. You can't choose ahead of time, but kudos for providing a vegetarian option. Sadly though it's not very good, a small box of pasta with not enough sauce and a tiny tub of (admittedly tasty) mousse. I used to lament the decline in Qantas's meal offering, but this is several steps down. At least the Grant Burge wine was good. Both flights arrived pretty much on time, ex-Melbourne it took a long time to leave the gate and get airborne. My verdict on Economy class: staff are good, the rest of the product could be better. I have 2 more trips coming up, so I should be able to observe any trends.

✅ Verified Review | Check-in was smooth, boarding efficient. The plane itself was clean, seats comfortable. Good pitch between seats. The selection for the inflight entertainment was excellent. For a main meal the offering seemed pretty poor, the butter chicken came in a small cardboard box and it was all rice with two pieces of chicken. Small cup of mousse for dessert. I noticed other passengers asking for seconds. The most disappointing of all was the service. The meal took a long time to arrive and even longer to be taken away. Later, a request for a drink from the galley took an hour to fulfil as clearly the staff wanted everyone to wait for the cart to roll through. Ive had much better service from Jetstar and Tiger.

✅ Verified Review | It is crystal clear from my experience flying Perth to Melbourne with Virgin Australia, that this is an airline in full cost cutting mode, and is now just nothing more than Tigerair with lipstick on. Myself and a friend had booked and paid for extra legroom tickets for our journey over 5 months in advance. At 2am before and early morning flight I received a text message which barely made any sense to state that I was no longer booked on the flight and re-booked to a later flight that will travel via Sydney. The only explanation for this was “engineering troubles” meant the plane for the route was downgraded to a 737. Anyone with basic knowledge of the industry knows this is just a standard ploy by airlines to cut costs. If the larger plane is not booked to capacity, bring in a smaller plane in its place and boot the remainder of booked passengers off the flight. This saves overheads and fuel, especially for cross-country flights such as this. Of course customer service staff didn’t seem fussed that we were put out in total travel time by 5 hours and had lost our extra legroom seats. Not only could we not get refunded for these seats at the time, myself and my friend were not even seated together for the flights from Perth to Sydney and Sydney to Melbourne. And of course it is incumbent upon the passenger to call up customer service and be placed on hold for long periods if you wish to even get a partial refund for what the airline blatantly failed to provide you with. Then the kicker on the flight back for any early Monday morning departure was this. We attempted to perform an online check-in on the morning of our flight but were not allowed to do so due to having an outstanding payment that I owed on the fare. This was not the case at all and in fact I was owed a refund at the time! There was traffic chaos that morning on the way to Tullamarine and we only arrived at the terminal 35 minutes prior to departure. We were immediately told the flight was closed and herded to a massive “customer service” queue that was staffed by one person and not moving at all. Seemed obvious Virgin’s intention is to do everything in their power to prevent paying passengers from boarding their flights. It seems this is a business directive from higher up to cut further costs. The check-in and baggage drop queues that morning came to a standstill twice as they are clearly not employing the requisite number of baggage handlers and customer service staff to service the amount of passengers travelling at peak times (there were 4 staff on the front desk of the Velocity Lounge painting their nails though). The paying passenger gets treated like livestock on a boat and is forced to pay more money to get a seat on another flight because of this.

✅ Verified Review | On 26 November the one daily flight from Hervey Bay to Sydney was 90 minutes late. The pilot was completely insouciant as to the delay - nil apology offered despite everyone missing their connections in SYD. Service on board unfriendly, surly and akin to sibling Tigerair. Being lunchtime, I was proffered a minuscule half-biscuit. Virgin Australia has now become but a pale shadow of its former self. Staff seemed interested only in flogging food to buy from the "menu'. Back to Qantas for this passenger.

✅ Verified Review | Los Angeles to Sydney. The flight was late leaving due to headwinds and the need to offload some freight. The new seats in business class are the best I have experienced. They are roomy, comfortable, very private with enough storage. The IFE was mostly good with new TV and movie releases. The airshow map was informative and easy to read. Flight attendants were very pleasant and I woke up to find an attendant placing a blanket over me. Food and drink excellent. Despite being late leaving the flight arrived near the stated arrival time. Platinum Velocity members can use the Star Alliance First Class Lounge at LAX.

Flew Melbourne to Sydney. I've been with Virgin for near on 5 years now. It's clear they've lost their way. They're no longer taking the fight to Qantas and the experience not only feels low cost carrier, but it has a lot of LCC elements. The "complimentary snack" is deplorable, regardless of the time of day. (You aren't fooling anyone.) The premium frequent flyer enhancements are rarely available (fly forward / premium exit etc.) The move away from in air Foxtel to byod seemed plausible at the time but there is such limited content and no USB or AC for charging across the fleet. (Excluding their 11 wide body aircraft which have IFE.) Worst of all, they are now usually more expensive than qantas with an inferior offering to jetstar. Frequent flyers will understand my pain as now I have to transition back over to Qantas. It's slow and painful but one airline is doing things right and the other, pretty much everything wrong.

✅ Verified Review | Melbourne to Canberra with Virgin Australia. The flight was delayed, we weren't told until past departure time. I liked how they called the back rows first for boarding, it makes sense to do that. Well done. Of course you'll always get others who ignore that. I wish they'd make them stand aside as the reason is efficiency in boarding. The pilot told us the conditions would be turbulent leaving Canberra and we'd be delayed into Melbourne due to winds and the fact they only had one runway open. The seat itself was tight, there was an empty muesli bar wrapper in my husbands seat pocket. It felt very budget, basic. We were offered tea / coffee / juice. Juice was a tiny pot. Plus we got a small pack of odd chick pea salt and vinegar rings. Yuk. Didn't matter for the short hop though. The staff were quite pleasant. Glad to see that on arrival they opened the back door to make exiting more efficient. After flying to Canberra Qantas and back Virgin, I'd say Qantas were better though.

✅ Verified Review | Hobart to Melbourne. Virgin Australia have a great system of offering passengers the chance to upgrade to Business Class. A passenger makes an offer of what he/she is prepared to pay for this upgrade. I was successful with a bid of $225. I am on holiday and decided that I will treat myself. This is not the first time I have done this; the experience is worth a few extra dollars. A professional experience in business class, but then, so they are in economy. Only a one hour flight, but the extra space, attention and food is worth the occasional splurge. Only eight seats on this aircraft, with two occupied. This is an experience worth having. If you haven't done it already, try it. You'll be back for more.

Brisbane to Los Angeles. I had a very good experience recently with Virgin Australia which deserves recognition. My wife and I had booked flights to Colombia through Delta Airlines, for which Virgin Australia operated the flight from Brisbane to Los Angeles. We had not confirmed that our infant son had been entered on the booking (our fault) by the time we got to the airport, so could not check him in in the conventional way. We went to the ticket desk to see if we could get him on the booking, a guy there took us through the entire process of calling Delta in the USA, setting up the payment, loading the info into Virgin´s system, and checking us in, all while dealing with multiple other issues (radio calls about luggage loading, late passengers etc). Because we had not got this booking sorted out before we got to the airport it was much harder for him to do it manually, but he stuck with us and got us on the plane, assuring us all the way that we would make the flight. Myself and my family are extremely grateful to Virgin Australia and the staff especially for this outstanding customer service. I would recommend Virgin Australia to anyone after this experience.

✅ Verified Review | Canberra to Brisbane. Lounge was pleasant in Canberra although I tried to use on of their computers as my battery was flat and their two computers were in need of considerable repair, keys that didn't work, very slow connection etc. Flight was fine, crew looked happy, level of attention to passengers in Business was adequate. Only ate olives and had a glass of wine. Late into Brisbane because of air traffic.