In June I had the opportunity to fly to Perth to meet my sister, whom I had not seen for almost 2 years. Having only just started work, I was a unsure if my working schedule would allow me to meet up with her. Besides, Perth is a good 5.5 hours away by plane from Brisbane. Geographically Perth is closer to Jakarta/Singapore/Kuala Lumpur than many of the eastern seaboard cities.
Flight details:
Flight number: DJ 474
Day: 31 May 2012
Seat: 27C
Scheduled takeoff: 2015
Actual takeoff: 2218
Scheduled landing: 0010
Actual landing: 0125
At the gate: 0805
Registration: Too dark to see
After a busy day at work, I quietly excused myself from the office, rushed home, packed and prepared, and walked out of the house a 6.10pm. Took the bus to Roma St Station, and was at the platform by 6.30pm. Plenty of time before the 6.45pm Airtrain to the airport.
But first, how I ended up with Virgin Australia over Jetstar.
When I booked my flights I had the choice between Jetstar and Virgin Australia. Both do the red-eye flight across the Australian continent, around the same time. Both were charging around the same price. $374 return. Plus the $9.00 credit card processing fee. Which I got back.
(Side rant: I am still waiting for the ACCC to crack down on this madness of credit card booking fees by the airlines. Industry insiders suggest that it costs no more than 12c to pay for the merchant credit card fee per transaction, so the credit card fees of $4.50/sector by Vrigin, $7 by Jetstar and Tiger Airways must represent and insane and obscene source of "ancillary revenue" for them.)
To pay for my tickets, Jetstar and Virgin Australia gave me the choices of paying by credit card (with the extra fees), PayPal (with fees), Gift Vouchers (which I didn't have), and a dodgy sounding payment system called POLi (I swear that is how it is spelt)
which offered relief from the booking fees.
Unless you happen to be using a non-Windows operating system. The POLi payment system seems to only work with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome under Windows.
Jetstar's booking system barfed when I tried to use the POLi system on a non-Windows platform. It refused to even process my request, and sent me back to the front page of their website.
(Side note: It seems like now Jetstar offer the option of Direct Debit into their bank account to pay for the tickets without incurring any payment fees. However, this option was not available to me at the time I did my booking.)
And the IT guys at Virgin know a thing or two, because when you try to select the POLi payment on a non-Windows platform, it helpfully tells you that the dodgyness that is POLi hasn't invaded these platforms, so would you please pay by credit card, and call the call centre to reverse the credit charge.
Which I was more than happy to do. So I paid with Visa, incurred the $9 charge, but had all the protection of the Visa payment system. Called the Virgin Australia call centre (a 13 number. A welcome improvement in an era where Air Asia and Tiger Airways don't have a number you can call to yell at them, and Air Asia X's Malaysian call number is a 600 (premium) number), which patched me to Filipino call centre. The person who took my call, while a bit hard to understand, was quite helpful. Mind you, this was done at 10.15pm on a Saturday night. Score one for oursourcing.
After explaining my situation (ie. I use something else other than Windows), and being put on hold on a terrible crackly line, I had my $9 credit card fee reversed, and the amount to be deposited in my bank account within 28 days. In reality it took about 12 days for it to be deposited back to me, so not too bad.
One gets the impression that this POLi system was tacked on by the airlines to keep the ACCC happy on paper.
And my understanding of POLi isn't very positive either. For IE it seems to be an ActiveX control that they use to intercept your connection to your online banking system, with all your credentials, to pull money out of your bank account to pay for your flight.
ActiveX. The word says it all. Honestly, I thought it had died with IE 9 (yes, it is not too shabby a browser). The optimist in me is thankful it wasn't Adobe Flash, but the security engineer in me is horrified. ActiveX. Unsigned code. Hijacking connections. 3rd party applications transferring money out of your bank account on your behalf.
Honestly, how expensive is a BPay solution?
To the lawyer in me, POLi seems to be a way of tossing the risk to the poor consumer. In a credit card transaction, Visa takes the risk should things go wrong. Virgin Australia bears the risk of the passenger's payment not clearing into their account before services are tendered. With POLi, if something goes wrong, the airline doesn't care, because it has your money, and if anyone bothers to read the terms and conditions before using POLi, the T&C's actually contract out all responsibility by POLi. So when things go wrong, its the poor consumer left fighting with their bank, which usually means they'll never win.
Anyway, for a change, the Airtrain arrived on time, and it was a proper Airtrain with luggage racks. Overall the journey to the domestic terminal was uneventful, except for the Bogans on board, which thankfully got off at Eagle Junction. Why do trains tend to invite all kinds of characters to ride them?
As I had done online check in prior, I decided to walk around the domestic terminal. And discovered my 2015 flight was delayed to 2100:
Then to 2125:
Then to 2150:
Honestly I was and still am peeved at Virgin Australia. While I have not flown them much, the few times I've been with them have been nothing but delays and delays. I was actually wistfully looking at the passengers on the Jetstar and Qantas flights to Perth around that time which were boarding and taking off on time.
Virtually all their flights that day were delayed one way or another. According to the cabin crew on the flight, they had a system meltdown that day, and that all flights were delayed across the network. Small comfort for the people who were up late waiting for me. Not to mention it had been a long day for me anyway.
Having not had dinner yet, and with time to kill in the airport. I tried to find something to eat. Unfortunately on the land side there is a paucity of food options. I had a toasted ham sandwich, which while nice was not filling enough for me.
To kill time I flicked through a copy of
The Daily Telegraph left by patrons past. I have no idea how on earth anyone reads The Daily Telegraph. Just reading the first few pages and I felt my brain cells die. Honestly, I can't believe people pay to actually read it.
But with not much to do, I didn't have much choice, and the JB Hifi catalogue wasn't much better in terms of intellectual input.
While at the airport I had my first brush with the effects of the mining boom: the whole place was swarming with workers in mining jumpsuits, probably on the flight from Rockhampton. They mixed with the men in suits: those off the flights from Sydney and Melbourne.
It is actually quite eye-opening to see the human faces of the mining boom in front of you. Most of them looked tired and dirty. One got the impression they came straight from knocking off a shift and are back in civilisation on their two week on-off roster. They may make 6 digit salaries, but the mental toll on them is the price they have to pay.
Just as a note: better dining options are available on the domestic terminal airside. There is a food court in the boarding area, with the usual chains of Subway, McD, KFC etc. Prices aren't too bad: just a shame they all pack up and close by 8pm.
To kill time, I wondered around the terminal:
Virgin Australia check-in desks. The terminal is divided between Qantas/Jetstar and Virgin Australia, with Tiger Airways lurking on the sidelines.
Virgin Australia self check-in terminals. The interface uses Adobe Flash.
I'm aware it is a common thing in the USA and Australia, but I still am not used to how the barrage claim area is on the landside for domestic flights, open to all. There isn't much stopping someone walking in and taking someone else's bag in the hope of some loot.
Also another Australian thing: paid luggage trollies. Yes, you actually need to cough up some money to help you bring your bags to the pick-up point. It is not as if we don't have to pay airport tax!
Still feeling pecking at the landside, I gravitated to the only thing that was open at that hour: Red Rooster, and ordered as Chicken Wrap. They close at 9pm: I was pretty much the last customer of the day for them. Was quite nice I must say.
The chicken wrap was wrapped up in this. Someone at the marketing department has a sense of humour. :D
Brisbane domestic is a pretty spartan affair. No free wifi (none that I could find anyway), a few internet terminals sponsored by Hertz in addition to the coin operated ones, and everything is shut after 8pm. That said, the Virgin Australia lounge looks pretty impressive from outside (it looks like it was recently refurbished), and the Qantas lounge wasn't too bad looking either.
At that hour however, everyone, including me, was tired, I was not in the mood to explore too much. Trying to get some rest, I was surrounded by crying toddlers, hyperactive kids (where does all that energy go to when we grow up?) and every other person was watching something on a tablet or a phone. I suppose it might have been a good time to catch up on some Shana Final at that time.
The flight:
It was a long night. A really long night.
Clearly there is traffic between Perth and Brisbane for there overnight flights. It was a full flight. Nowhere for anyone to stretch out. The late hour meant everyone looked half-dead.
I was on their new 738, which come with the leather seats and mood lighting. And insanely tight seat pitches. There was no sensible way to put my long legs. I kept knocking the seat in front of me, the person next to me, or the people which were going up and down the aisle. That was a really uncomfortable 5.5 hours for me.
At least on Virgin Australia there is a free flow of plain water of drink onboard and stay hydrated. I didn't have to pay inflated prices just to stay alive. To help pass the time I tried reading the book that I had brought along with me, but the reading light shone at an impossible angle. The mood lighting had dimmed so it really felt like night, so I tried to get some rest, closing my eyes in cycles.
I managed to kill 90 minutes of the flight time by watching the Johnny English Reborn movie on my laptop that I had brought with me. The battery barely held up for the length of the movie. Still, not too bad for a 4+ year old battery.
I felt
Reborn was better than the first movie, although Rowan Atkinson is starting to show his age. Oh, and a line-less Pik-Sen Lim who plays the killer cleaning lady. Haven't seen her since
Mind Your Language!
I found it odd that despite being a brand new plane, there was no IFE on-board. Much later I read that Virgin Australia have decided to do away with the wiring and extra weight of a IFE system on-board their planes, and instead distribute ipad's filled with entertainment content. Well, may there might be some merit to the whole tablet computing platform afterall.
Landed in Perth 0125 (0325 AEST). By this time I had been awake for close to 20 hours and very tired. Perth that night was very foggy and our docking with the terminal was delayed as the plane required to be towed to the terminal owing to the reduced visibility. While initially it was announced we would disembark from the back, it was not to be, and slowly the planed emptied from the front.
With no check-in luggage, I walked out of the terminal into a nippy Perth night, and after a bit of searching found my sister waiting for me.
As always, it was nice to see her again.
Final thoughts:
Virgin Australia has been undergoing a rebranding exercise, pitching itself as less of a traditional Low Cost Carrier and more of a young, hip entrant into the market to get a slice of the business travel traffic away from Qantas.
But they have an awful amount of work to do if they really want to take a bite out of the pie from the traditional markets. While delay's affect all airlines, my limited experience with Virgin Australia leaves me the impression that their reliability needs improvement.
For me this time round, it was less the journey and more of the destination that I focused on. A weekend in Perth with my sister. Delays or not, it was nice to see her again, however briefly.
