Virgin Atlantic Arvostelua 

After a positive experience flying with Virgin Atlantic for our honeymoon in 2023, I thought I'd check out their holiday deals before booking our Florida trip this year. The sale worked out cheaper than other sites we had looked at so I went to book but the website would crash every time I went to pay! I called the Virgin helpline where I spoke to Joanne, despite it being almost the end of the day on a bank holiday, she stayed late to help me get it booked. She managed to keep the price we saw online, find us a better flight that meant a much shorter connection, and got us lounge access! I'm also aware her colleague Michelle was also there behind the scenes helping find the best flights for us so thank you to Michelle too! Not only this, Joanne was kind, friendly and gave me honest, helpful advice about which documents to bring when travelling in a complicated family situation. Just so lovely and helpful and really saved the day and saved us money on our holiday! Thanks again Joanne and Michelle, you are amazing!

It's a Zero! Travelled with Virgin Atlantic from London to Miami yesterday. The flight was due to leave at 10:50 and I dropped off my bag at about 7am. I arrived in Miami at 3:45pm. It is now 24 hours later and I still have not received my bag. There is no number to call re delayed/lost baggage.The only means of communication is via email, SMS or WhatsApp. The information provided is either incorrect or blatant lies told to appease the customer. Using the tag number provided I know that my luggage has been sitting at MCO for the last 4 hours. They sent it via Delta. Delta cannot release the luggage to a courier as it has a Virgin reference. Yet Virgin is still telling me that someone will be in touch as soon as they have reviewed my case. I have been hearing this every time I ask for an update. How do you leave baggage behind on a flight that was nowhere near full? I hope the other passengers whose baggage were also left are having better luck.
The latest is that I received quite an abrupt email telling me that owing to distance I will receive my luggage sometime in the morning. The distance mentioned is the airport being 1 hour away from where I am vacating. No mention of the fact that the bag has been at the airport for 5 hours now.

Flew Virgin business class back from Miami to Heathrow on the old A330.
I’ve flown business around the world for the last 15 years and the facilities, particularly the seats are THE worst I’ve experienced. They are NOT Business class seats (or Upper as they call them). Narrow, very little space to move, no storage, no pod, no privacy. I paid extra for a window seat which was BEHIND me! Truly awful experience.
The menu was limited. For example the ‘express breakfast’ was fried food or fried food….. no cereal or healthy continental.
ALL the staff excluding one older member don’t know customer focus or care.
I WILL NEVER FLY VIRGIN AGAIN

Currently very disappointed with them. One of our family has a severe nut allergy .. on booking the holiday, I was assured they would be able to take care of this, announce it etc. I’m now told that they only announce someone has a peanut allergy
And will not state nut allergy. This is clearly discriminatory as a severe nut allergy is classed as a disability. Further more they might also serve salads with nuts sprinkled on them. Feel totally misled by them with the nut allergy not taken seriously.

Id be interested to know, why Virgin state they take all allergies seriously BUT refuse to announce that there is someone with a severe nut allergy on board? Any answers Virgin?

We booked Club seats for an 11 hour flight to Grenada. As we are frequent business class flyers I can confidently say this flight was one of the worst we have experienced. The layout of the seats - the width of the seats and the total lack of anywhere to place cups, glasses, reading material was non existent and provided the most uncomfortable flight. The flight attended did tell us the new layout was amazing and we were unlucky to be on one of the old planes - and both at the same price - well done Virgin Atlantic - you are now voted even lower than BA !!

Paying a premium rate for exit seats and being reallocated alternative and inferior seating upon arrival at the airport, for an 11-hour flight, is unacceptable. Then waiting weeks for a compensation claim to be processed is ridiculous.

Woe betide if you have dietary requirements. Gluten-free requests were met with rice cakes! I had to ask cabin crew for butter - anything to make it more palatable. When I followed this up, the response received stated that meals are complimentary!

Given the extortionate cost of Virgin flights and significant drop in service post-COVID, it is not unreasonable to expect decent meals - especially for an 11-hour flight.

Virgin Atlantic are nothing more than an overpriced Ryanair equivalent.

Worst airline till now travelled . Travelled on 21-JUL-2022. LHR to MUMbai. They are high discriminatory on routes to india . The aircraft they fly in these routes are very old. We have paid hefty price for the ticket ( London LHR to Mumbai )and pre booked seats so that , my family are toghether . In spite of that they provided boarding passes with mother and my 4 year old kid given seat placements near emergency exit.

I have heard they put good aircraft’s on routes to rich countries like America , uae, European countries , Australia .

Highly discriminatory airline

We were hit with the Heathrow incident and our flights were cancelled.

We were moved to BA who were an absolute disgrace, they muddled our flight and changed it to Air France but never told us. Air France also left the day before we were booked so we had nowhere to go. We were stuck in Africa.

We thought we would ask Virgin Atlantic for help. They were fast to respond, got us a flight ASAP and it cost us no extra money. We can also claim back the costs we incurred for the cancelation.

After the disaster with BA we cannot recommend Virgin enough for dependability, speed, efficiency and price.

Virgin service, entertainment and beverages onboard are also a lot better than most airlines.

Thank you to your staff for their great service and for looking after us.

Recently needed to do a simple return date change which for decades has been a reasonable £30 fee if fare purchased using some Virgin points, now with the so called dynamic pricing (points devaluation scheme)
They took an additional 20,000 points to do the change when the total return fare was only 15,000 points plus fees.
Please watch out for super sharp practice from this once reputable airline. You have been warned .
PS VA. Please don’t respond with your cut & paste usually hollow apology.

I was flying home from New York to London Heathrow and got caught up in the Heathrow airport closure. The staff at Virgin could not have been more empathetic and helpful in what was a very challenging situation. They rebooked me automatically to a new flight later that day and the communications were excellent. This was a stark contrast to United Airlines who I was originally booked to fly with on Thursday evening.

very poor service. I booked a flight from LHR to DEL and made a minor spelling mistake. its a week that I am struggling to find someone fix that error. virgin has an online chat which is not of any use. I am scared I may lose the full money 650 pound for just a minor mistake. Avoid this scammer company and better to book with a reputable airline.

Bombay to LHR VS355
Terrible Experience at Mumbai Airport – Broken Promises & Rude Staff
My recent experience with Virgin Atlantic at Mumbai Airport was awful, thanks to the dishonest and rude behavior of Alina, Ankit, and manager Suresh Anthony.

We were asked if we could fly the next day (March 11 instead of March 10) in exchange for two free flight tickets and a hotel stay. They also promised that if we still flew on the same flight, we would still receive the free flights as a goodwill gesture. However, this was a complete lie.
At 9:29 AM, instead of informing us properly, they shouted from the check-in desk and rudely told us we were on the same flight—but without any compensation. When we reminded them of their promise, they denied it and dismissed us.
We then had to rush through two security checks to Gate 71 with no assistance, despite my anxiety and asthma. The in-flight service was just as disappointing—slow, dismissive, and unhelpful, and my vegetarian meal was broken promises and unprofessionalism made this one of my worst travel experiences in 40 years. Avoid Virgin Atlantic from Mumbai at all costs!
I forgot to mention that how they have treated elderly lady who had a staff ticket.they were very rude and not helpful and sent her back from airport without making sure that how and where she will go from Mumbai airport.I have never seen such a rude and disrespectful people that they treat venerable passengers like this. They even gave us wrong email address for complaint and after I sent email to right complain department they have still not responded.

I was travelling on upper class and service was so bad. Crew were laid back they run out of food. One member of crew was standing by snack bar brushing his teeth and was gobsmacked never seen anything like it

I had a medical situation about one hour into an 11 hour flight with Virgin. I can only describe the staff as amazing. They are clearly very well trained and they looked after me with kindness and consideration.

They will rinse your money for what you can. Needed to change my flight to a day earlier and it cost me over £200 (£150 change fee) despite my flight being two months away - and you also loose the £30 you have to pay for a standard seat. Behind all the smiles in the ads its just grabby capitalism

Luggage didn't get boarded onto our flight, and no reason as to why given.
was told I had 21days to submit a claim, we were on a safari and flew on the Monday didn't receive our luggage until the Thursday night
and when we did receive it my trainers were missing from the case.
Now I've been told I should have informed them of my intention to claim within 5 days! we were not told this and I cant see this on their site, we were in a remote area of south Africa on safari with no Internet so this would have been impossible. No mention of this either on the letter from airport staff. Virgin have said they won't do anything no reimbursement for my trainers and no consideration for the stress they caused us by not bording our luggage a service we'd paid for.
on top of this our flight home was horrific a young boy was unwell and had x2 episodes of diarrhea in the seat, the staff were rude and derogatory to the boys mother and made her struggle to remove the seat covers with no help and then gave her a row for doing so, no infection control measure taken for well over an hour then they decided to wipe the handles of the toilet doors. They took ages to take away the contaminated wipes etc and were too busy gossiping about the incident. An air hostess removed my USB cable so roughly that it broke, instead of asking me to remove it. Me and my husband were served at different times by different teams and they would not serve us together. The food was awful and they ran out of options on both flights so you had no option to choose from. on awful experience with virgin from the airport, to the flights and customer service. I wouldn't even give them 1* avoid this company

Greedy, poor service, liars.

That's all you need to know about the people working at Virgin Atlantic and the kind of service they provide to paying customers.

The customer service from Virgin has deteriorated over the last few months to the point of being entirely unhelpful.
Firstly, when you call you get a recorded message saying they have unusually high call volumes... every single time.
If its always high call volumes then its not unusual, that's a call center staffing issue!

Secondly, and the main issue: I applied for a refund for a mistaken double booking (a booking that was made via an agent on their website by the way, so their fault) in December 2024. Originally, they said I should receive the refund in 7-14 working days. So I waited and nothing happened. 2 months of calls as follows:

1st call to Agent: 20mins wait time to answer - initially said the refund had been paid. When asked to where it had been paid, he was unable to answer and discovered that it actually hadnt been paid. He then had a 15min chat to his manager and escalated the refund to the refund department.

2nd call to Agent 1+ month later: 20min wait time to answer - Also initially said the refund had been paid. Again, when asked to where it had been paid, she was unable to answer and discovered that it actually hadnt been paid (again). She also noted that no previous escalation had actually been placed on the refund. She then had a 15min chat to her manager (again) and apparently urgently escalated the refund to the refund department (again). I was told to wait 10 working days and my money would be refunded.

3rd call agent 11 working days later - 35min waiting time to answer. Almost the exact same conversation as twice before:
- believed me when I said the refund had not been paid
- noted that no previous escalations had actually been placed on the refund again
- then had a 15min chat to his manager (again) - this time, the customer service manager called the refunds manager for 15mins, but apparently the refunds department weren't responding (in the middle of the working day, 3pm in the UK and they're UK based). I was then told I would be called back as soon as refunds called customer service back.

Its a complete shambles of an organization behind the scenes. No one seems to be doing anything, and there's no record of them doing anything when they do do it (unless they tell you what you want to hear just to get you off the phone)! I look forward to inevitably adding to this review in future.

Unacceptable customer service, for peace of mind, its worth paying a little extra with some other airline, avoid the stress.

Horrendous customer service - lost baggage
Absolutely horrendous experience with their customer service and baggage claims departments. Multiple forms completed online, multiple emails sent, followed up with numerous phone calls and further emails with absolutely no useful response. The 2 responses that we did have via email, 5 days later, were blatantly scripted and the advisors clearly hadn’t bothered to read our email so they could address the relevant question.

Rang them today and after a 47 minute wait on the phone I was advised I’d receive a call back within 20 minutes, I expressed my concern that they wouldn’t call me back and lo and behold - no call back.

It has now been nearly a month since they “misplaced” our baggage which we may be able to tolerate , as mistakes happen, but the lack of response , service and care has been disgusting.

If there was something less than 1 star would have selected that.

Adverts on TV about taking sports equipment yet they are so strict on measurements!! and what you can take.

Also £150 admin fee for any changes, I'd be happy to have changed my own flight online but I couldn't so had to call. I understand a fee but not £150.