I got home finally.
All days bar about 3 were clear of ash, both visibly and forecast by VAAC in Darwin (BOM). The first day it was clear, Jetstar and Qantas flew in all scheduled flights + 6 recovery flights. Not only did Qantas fly in scheduled flights, they flew in a 747.
The first day it was safe, I think virgin did no flights. The second day,. virgin flew 2 of 3 scheduled flights and no extra recover flights. Apparently all flights were recover flights.
The whole time, none of the Aussie fleets operated after dark, which I understand. Part of the VAA was based on PIREPS and no pilot in their right mind would fly in to Denpasar without seeing what the ash cloud was doing.
When I finally got a flight out with virgin, I had to fly Denpasar, Darwin, Sydney. Brisbane. I was business class, but apparently it was more important to screw me around so I remained in business than to put me economy direct Denpasar to Brisbane, even why I said I was happy to fly (and pay for) economy. Not bad when I am a frequent flier. Recently ,they even sent an email congratulating me on how many hours I have spent with them and offering a substantial discount on business, and even that email only had about 10% of the flights I had done with Virgin.. Pretty obvious to me now they dont give a flog about their big spend customers. What pissed me off even more, is when we got to Darwin, Virgin said (and I have it in email and SMS) that we would be cleared by customs in Darwin. Instead, we had to remove all carry on, get scanned into Darwin terminal and then get holed up for 5 hours before we could continue to Sydney. Virgin did not even inform their own staff about what was going, they had no idea.
I switched from Qantas to Virgin about 13 years ago, and have been pretty loyal since. I get airlines have issues, and I get environmental conditions. What I want put up with is rubbish service as a reasonably high paying client. It annoyed me enough that I am going back to Qantas. Its just a shame I now have to work up a decent status with Qantas, and I still need to use up my FF points with Virgin.
From Virgin, October 18:
SHARE YOUR STATUS
(Go on, you've earned
the right to brag)
I think I have earned the right to brag about how shitty the service was too.
Speedbird 9 had no idea. Virgin did.