Virgin-express.com

Review by Adrian Mann, owner of Adrian Mann Design, providing independent reviews and analysis of travel web sites in the UK.

With all the news recently about Easyjet, Go, Ryanair and others, it’s easy to overlook another low-cost, no frills airline – Virgin Express. They fly out of Heathrow to a number of European destinations, e.g. Copenhagen, Lisbon, Madrid, Milan, Rome, Athens and more, with a fleet of 13 Boeing 737’s.

Overall
Bold use of the Virgin corporate colours (mainly red) predominates in the design. They’ve taken a fairly conservative approach to the layout, and have stuck to tried and tested plain HTML and GIF animations. There’s a navigation bar across the top of the page which leads to all the usual pages – Flights & Fares, Destinations, News, Contacts and so on, while the rest of the page carries links to promotions and offers.

Content
The core of the site is the booking engine. It’s easy to find from the homepage, and offers a choice of languages – Danish, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Portugese, Italian and Swedish – and a choice of travel products – flights, hotels and cars. The flights booking is in 5 sections, Search, Select, Confirm, Purchase and Itinerary, with progress through the process being indicated across the top of the page. It requires a minimum of information to conduct a search, just date, where they journey is to and from, and number of passengers. Results are then shown by type of fair, ranging from the cheapest ‘Virgin Bargain’ to the most expensive ‘Virgin Flexible’. Select the appropriate out and back flights, and it’s on to the ‘Confirm’ page, where the total price and fare rules are shown. Security information is prominent, and there’s an option to book with security, using SSL backed by Verisign, or non-secure for older browsers or those behind a firewall. Next is the purchase page, where all the passengers’ details are entered, and payment via credit card is made.
Virgin Express is a ticketless airline, so instead of receiving the more usual travel documents, you’ll only receive a reservation number, either by email or post, which is then presented at the desk at the airport. The whole process is quick and simple, and presents no nasty surprises or pitfalls.
Virgin Express make their timetables available online. These can be viewed by selecting a route and dates, and there’s an option to print the selected details, or download the whole timetable in PDF format.
Selecting ‘Destination Information’ shows the Virgin Express route map, and a list of their destinations. Information for each of the cities is broken down into sections, such as weather, city guide, car and hotel booking and airport information. The general destination information is provided by external sites, usually a local tourism or business information site. Alternatively, you can have a look at the inflight magazine via a link on the homepage, which has more on the destinations and European travel in general.
Airport information is basic, giving the Virgin Express desk location and opening hours, telephone numbers, airport location and where available, a link to the airports own web site.
Travel information contains pages on all the usual subjects, e.g. baggage tracing, terms and conditions, special needs, travel documents etc., and there are also pages of corporate information and news, a subscription page for their e-mail newsletter, a jobs page and a section for Travel Agents and those with corporate accounts.

Summary
As you’d expect from a no frills airline, it’s a no-frills functional site. Everything performs well, and there were no bad links or missing images found. All the pages appear quickly, the searches and bookings performed without much waiting, and the information provided is adequate. Site quality leaves a little to be desired in places – image quality is variable, alignment of items is occasionally off, and there’s a general lack of consistency in the formatting of the text, but nothing that could be classed as a ‘show stopper’.
The site isn’t big or clever, but robust and solid, and should allow you to book quickly and with confidence.