Fly Virgin Atlantic II

I wrote the blog Fly Virgin Atlantic on July 25 2012. In order to save my daughter's time and she being the passenger,  I wrote the complaint email and she sent it out as the complainant. Here comes the reply from Virgin Atlantic. 

Dear Miss Siu

Thank you so much for your recent email.  I was very disappointed to her that your flight from Sydney to Hong Kong was cancelled.

I have taken the time to fully investigate the cancellation of your flight and would like to explain the reason why your flight was cancelled.

The inbound aircraft due to operate your flight diverted to Brisbane due to extreme fog in Sydney, which prevented us from landing safely.  Delays caused by congestion in Brisbane meant that the crew were unable to operate the flight on to Sydney, because they would have exceeded their legal duty hours. 

We therefore had no option but to cancel your flight, in order to satisfy the legalities of crew working hours and minimum rest periods. 

Our airport staff in Sydney worked proactively to rebook all affected passengers on to other available services departing Sydney, in order to minimise the disruption to your journey, and I can see that our staff booked you to travel with us the following day.  I hope you can accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Although, occasionally, cancellations are unavoidable, we try to be clear with passengers about what is happening.  In hindsight, it is evident that we could have improved on this occasion.   You have made some valid and constructive observations and I will make sure these are passed to the station manager, as they may be helpful for the future.

In closing, I do hope that you will accept my sincere apologies that you felt so let down following your flight.  I am confident that we are capable of delivering the level of service you have every reason to expect, and given the privilege of serving you in the future, we will do our best to ensure that any travel is without incident or disappointment of any kind.

Kind regards

Hayley Leaney (Mrs)
Customer Liaison Manager

Never mind the typo in the first line of the letter. The reply letter may please some easy going complainants but not me. Cancellation blah blah blah. The subject matter of the complaint was why flight information was not updated. I did not complain about the cancellation itself. No one will dispute cancellations are unavoidable. I did not make any constructive suggestion either. I only queried why the very minimum they could have done by updating the flight information was not done to avoid passengers' unnecessary travel to the airport. It is a very basic work attitude not luxuriously demanded from an affected passenger. It is interesting to see the reply  "In hindsight, it is evident that we could have improved on this occasion. " Updating the flight information is a hindsight epiphany, Oh My God. It is not the first day Virgin has been in operation. In blind sight they just turn a blind eye to sluggishly claim they have discharged their duty to the best of their incompetent ability. If the station manager ever gets to the witness stand, I will just crack him/her in a few questions. I would expect to see an unreserved and profuse apology for the mishandling of the cancellation. It is ludicrous to see "airport staff in Sydney worked proactively to rebook all affected passengers on to other available services departing Sydney". What else do you do? Cancel the flight and confiscate the money? The letter is an affront to the intelligence of an ordinary person.