Virgin Blue cops flak from passengers over delays

A Report in The Press in NZ says that Virgin Blue airlines is under fire from passengers irate at massive delays, only weeks after launching its new Pacific Blue domestic service, with tens of passengers faced overnight delays yesterday as a series of Pacific Blue flights to Australia were cancelled.

The airline recorded its worst on-time-performance result in over three years during November, with just 78 per cent of flights on time.

The figure was for the overall Virgin Blue group, which includes flights to the Pacific Islands and Australia.

Pacific Blue’s domestic service, between Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland, was launched amid much fanfare in November.

General manager Adrian Hamilton-Manns said the airline was “very pleased and heartened” by the first few weeks of operation in New Zealand, but aviation analyst Peter Clark slammed its on-time performance as “crap”.  Clark said the airline was “struggling”.

“They shouldn’t have teething problems.”  “They have an infrastructure.”  “Out of Auckland, they’re not departing at rush-hour, nine or 10 planes in 20 minutes.”  “They (only) have to push back one plane off the domestic terminal.”

One domestic traveller, Ben Taylor, last month had his flight from Christchurch to Wellington delayed overnight.  He had flown to Christchurch to visit family and friends for Christmas and was due back at work the following day.

Pacific Blue operates two 180-seat Boeing 737-300s on 10 return flights between Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch each day.

Several more Pacific Blue passengers faced overnight delays on flights to Australia yesterday.  Hari Krishna and son Shalvin were scheduled to leave Wellington for Brisbane at 4pm on Wednesday.  Their flight was cancelled and they were flown to Christchurch only to be told they would have to wait until the following morning to leave for Brisbane.

When they arrived ready to depart at 5am yesterday, they were told they would have to wait another day to fly out this morning.  A tired looking Krishna said he was frustrated by the delays.

Phillip Hutt, who was travelling from Christchurch to Sydney, said the airline handled the delays “extremely badly”.  “They tried booking people into other airlines and other flights but they were processing them at about one every half hour.”  “It was very slow.”

Hutt, who was travelling with his wife, Sveta, and children Alex, two, and Sveta, 14, said he would not fly with the airline again. “You might save a few hundred dollars, but by the time you get stuffed around for a whole day that doesn’t become the most important thing.”

The family hoped to depart early this morning after a night spent in the airport hotel, courtesy of the airline.

All delayed passengers were also given a meal allowance of $50 each per day.

Pacific Blue’s Hamilton-Manns said the delays had been caused by unscheduled maintenance.

“Obviously, Pacific Blue is doing everything it can to get our guests to where they are going as quickly as possible while at the same time minimising disruption to the guests involved.”

A Report by The Mole from The Press