Virgin Atlantic Recensioni 2.229

Poor customer service culminated in a patronising email. I’ve been a Virgin member for going on 23 years, I’m now going to use up my points and companion vouchers - accumulated over years of loyalty - and find a better provider. A once excellent airline has lost its way.

If I could give no star!

We had a very poor experience with Virgin Atlantic on both our outbound flight from London Heathrow to Dubai and the return flight.
Despite requesting and pre-booking a bassinet, it was given to another family. I was also seated away from the rest of my travel party, which made flying for the first time with an infant far more stressful and overwhelming, especially as I was already anxious about the journey.
On the return flight from Dubai to Heathrow, a member of the economy cabin crew (Rhianna) was consistently rude and unprofessional. She spoke to one member of our group as though she did not understand English, despite English being spoken fluently. This was uncomfortable and unnecessary.
We had also pre-booked special meals, which were not served when the main meals were distributed. We were told that all meals had already been given out and were asked to choose from the standard options instead. Halfway through eating, our pre-ordered meals suddenly arrived, highlighting poor organisation and communication.
At one point during the flight, five of us pressed the call bell for assistance and no crew member responded. When I asked for water for my one-year-old son while food was being served, the same crew member repeatedly walked away. She then escalated the situation to her manager as if we had been rude, and arranged for other crew members to take over service for our row, which felt uncomfortable and unfair.
To make matters worse, we believe food poisoning occurred on both flights. Upon landing in the UAE, one member of our party suffered from vomiting and diarrhoea, ruining Christmas Day. On landing back in London, another member of the group experienced the same symptoms, which was an awful start to the New Year.
Overall, the customer service, organisation, and care shown—particularly when travelling with a young child—were far below expectations. This experience has left us extremely disappointed and reluctant to fly with Virgin Atlantic again.

Vile horrendous beasts. This disgusting lot of charlatans put me through hell. I asked simply how much a refund would be as who wants to fly to fascist USA and the monsters just refunded my whole flight plus taxes and fees into THEIR POCKETS???!!!

Even adding a wholly unlawful £25 fee to boot!

ADR came next, more corrupt scum. Fortunately the airlines lies in the secret evidence did come to light and they soon gave me MY effing money back.

I will never forget that 10 months of hell. Not a penny in compensation. I should sue you filth backwards, but I have no fight left.

The monsters that answer emails (whenever they get round to it) answer nothing and ALL is copy paste garbage.

Never in my 50 years have I experienced such an evil airline. Scum, scum, scum.

Booked a flight from Heathrow to Amritsar which a change at Delhi to an Air India flight. Connecting flight changed sixteen times. Then changed to an Air Indigo flight with a six hour wait at Delhi without even asking us if we were happy with this. To add insult to injury, additional luggage charges with Air Indigo added, again without checking with us if it was ok.

When we complained they acted like they had done us a favour by changing our connecting flight so that we're sitting in an airport for six hours and having to pay £200 extra for luggage on a connecting flight which we absolutely refuse to do.

Absolutely, absolutely horrendous and abysmal airline and will never ever be flying with them again.

Paid for a premium Upper-Class seat to Male. Couldn't even use the book light, and nobody seemed interested at all. I believe the book lights work at BA!

Lost my luggage on a re-routed, connected flight from Frankfurt. I paid to upgrade for extra legroom, so they knew I was on the plane. My bag was left at LHR. Long story short it took them 4 days for my bag to reach me in Dubai. Only found it on day 3! Would only reimburse me for my clothing. First and last time to fly with Virgin Atlantic.

We had never flown with Virgin before, and certainly never will again after our recent experience. Our flight from Heathrow to Miami was delayed by 4 hours, we sat on the plane waiting for a fuel issue to be resolved. We hoped our return flight would be smoother but no such luck. Our return flight was cancelled on the day of return, we were advised by email once we reached the airport, we still don’t know why, but I’m guessing from the limited number of people queuing at the desk, it was because the flight was under booked. Virgin booked us on a British Airways flight 5 hours later than our original flight so we spent a total of 12 hours in the airport. We had booked and paid for extra legroom with Virgin for our return flight given how little legroom there was on the outbound flight, but of course no extra legroom seats were available on the BA flight. We have contacted Virgin for compensation & a refund on the extra legroom upgrade but have yet to get a response from them. Virgin soured an otherwise enjoyable holiday.

Quite possibly the worst leg room I have ever had. As someone with a hip replacement leg room is important as long flights with cramped spaces become super painful. After having flown with various airline it's sad to see how virgin, who used to have a higher standard than the usual 'budget' airlines, slip to just another cash grab where you have to pay $50 for an extra inch of leg room in an already extremely cramped space.

12 hours before my flight, and I cannot purchase a suitcase. The website makes it almost impossible to do the simplest task, to purchase luggage. Website is very confusing and there is absolutely no way to check what you are allowed to take with you.

Not surprised the reviews are so poor!!

Had our allocated seats moved and they allocated a 2 year old a seat on her own on a 10 hour flight!! They kept saying because it was booked using friends and family discount I have no consumer rights!! I paid 6k for 4 flights and got a discount of £549! I would have rather paid the extra!! Virgin when I asked for a refund said I couldn't because 24 hours before flight even though 48 hours prior I had the seats I selected!! They then threatened me with canceling the flights and said they will get a security check on me and report me to the staff travel team!! As I said if they change my flights on the way home I would kick off and refused to get on the plane and get my credit card to do a charge back!! ..
. Travelling with a health condition and 2 children under 2! Who we paid for seats for should not be stressful!!! Shame on you!!

Virgin Atlantic significantly changed our international flight by over two hours, and despite this being their schedule change, they refused to reasonably accommodate us. We are a family of five traveling internationally, and when we asked to reschedule to a more suitable flight, we were told it would cost an additional $500 plus nearly 500,000 more frequent flyer points.

That is completely unreasonable, especially when the change was initiated by the airline—not us. We were essentially penalized for Virgin Atlantic’s own schedule disruption.

For an airline that markets itself as premium and customer-focused, this experience was anything but. No flexibility, no empathy for a family traveling together, and no meaningful attempt to find a fair solution. Customer service felt rigid and transactional, not supportive.

We chose Virgin expecting better treatment and reliability. Instead, we were left stressed, frustrated, and disappointed. This experience has seriously damaged our trust, and we will think twice before booking with Virgin Atlantic again.

Drunken Physical Assault and Racial Abuse on the flight VS300. Traumatising experience in the flight from Heathrow to Delhi on 21st December 2025.
The drunk passenger sitting in front of me assaulted an Indian passenger, bullied him by calling him abusive names and punched him. Although I complained about the drunk passenger hours ago this has happened, they claimed that he had a brain injury and hence the behaviour although it was obvious that he was drunk before boarding. When I asked whether he presented a medical report on his brain injury, they said they have not asked or checked as they trusted him on the basis that he is a white male. He was served alcohol during the flight (as it is supposedly normal to be a white British and drunk) and kept drinking until he was completely out of it. Extreme negligence from the cabin crew who did absolutely nothing. The drunken guy insulted the Indian woman sitting next to him and verbally abused everyone around him. He caused me a knee injury. When he finally punched the other passenger, all cabin crew were hiding at the back of the plane and only came 5 minutes later. Other passengers had to interrupt to stop the drunk guy and they got hurt as well. Incompetent cabin crew finally arrived and failed to keep the situation under control. When I talked to them about what happened and that he was drunk, they said he is not drunk, just a brain injury until a 1lt of empty vodka bottle was found in his backpack! They shouted at Indian passengers once they arrived the scene and told them to stop recording and taking photos as to cover their negligence and incompetency.
I filed a formal complaint about the negligence and lack of safety procedures to Virgin Atlantic and their response was "We are sorry that you had to experience this. We are not limiting the amount of alcohol served in the flights and we are happy with it". No acknowledgment of negligence and incompetency, no compensation, no corrective action, nothing! The assaulted passenger got in touch with me and he said he has not received any apology or compensation and he is starting a legal case against VA.
Paid more than £1200 for the journey to get traumatised in a VA flight. Stay away especially if you are an ethnic person, might get killed in a VA flight because of the racist cabin crew as they do not take your complaints seriously and favour white passengers over ethnic passengers.

Virgin Atlantic staff broke into my suitcase a stole valuable items and then refused to take accountability. I was block from making a complaint in the Airport by Airport security and I requested wheel chair assistance and all I got is abuse. I reported the theft but MET police are more useless than Virgin Atlantic and refused to even investigate and listed as a theft in transit meaning "We dont care" BEWARE WHEN BOOKING WITH VIRGIN ATLANTIC AND HIDE YOUR VALUABLE ITEM AS THEY WILL STEAL AND DEFEND THE THIEVES. Disgusting the way they lie and bring out hidden rules so they don't have to be accountable and try to blame the customer for their staff STEALING!

LHR to Barbados economy - Have flown Virgin many times but not for a few years. Was looking forward to the flight but I won’t fly Virgin again in a hurry. Seats were very uncomfortable, and my seat wouldn’t recline properly. In flight entertainment didn’t work properly on way there and back again. Shoddy second class experience. Not the Virgin I used to know. They badly need to upgrade their seats and entertainment systems, it’s more like a budget airline now. Also charging for reserving a seat on a long haul flight…who does that??

long term flying club members, and have taken several flights over the years (Florida, Barbados and Maldives). without flying club these destinations would be so far outside our budget! We are almost always in economy (most recently just once in Premium for one flight which was amazing!). we have always found the staff to be amazing, great service, enjoyed the food. boarding and processes always well managed

Absolutely terrible website experience with all aspects of Virgin.
Booked a flight with them to Fort Lauderdale and a few weeks later got a message from them to say that one of the flights had been moved so I now wouldn't be able to make the connection and could `i go online to choose another flight.
Went online and followed the instructions only to find that only about 4 of the 20+ flights listed had space in economy delight and 2 of those wanted to charge me £6,000+ for the two us to switch. The cheapest option, which was a very late night flight, was still an additional £400 for the two of us so I phoned them up and spoke to a guy who happily told me that he couldn't understand the problem as they have lots of Economy Delight flights available.
Only after I explained to him that if that was the case then they were, in effect, trying to defraud me by not showing me those flights as a choice did he disappear off for 20 minutes while I was on hold to look at the booking and come back to say that they could see my problem but didn't know why it was like that so would consult their IT department.
When I asked if that was the same for other customers who may not have wanted to phone them up but just paid the extra, he had no answer so who knows how many people they've defrauded.
Shocking situation and unbelievably poor service!!

Definitely not the best airline.
The worst is the food.
The plastic fork started to fall to bits while eating. Guess the food was to hot and hard for the material.
Tasteless and cheap.
We had an ice cream I thought oh that is nice and 30 min later
we were given a scone (which we all know crumbles a lot) with clotted cream and jam. What mess 😨. And what a sugar overload. 🤮
Really disappointed.
The reason we booked the flight was we thought Virgin must be great and it was a direct flight to Miami.
Definitely not again.

I booked a transatlantic ticket through an OTA, my experience soured when I tried checking my luggage. The gate guy said I need to.pay additional $ 75 because I have not checked my luggage despite paying $ 561.00. Despite,the flying time was more than ten hours were provided a messy pizza a day a chocolate cake in a cup. We were only served another meal just before landing. Very poor service.

My trip was booked almost a year in advance on Virgin Flight to Dubai 14th Jan - return 21 Jan 2025. We are going in celebration of our 45th Wedding anniversary. We had the choice of every seat in upper class when we booked the trip. We booked ourselves the flight and the hotels separately. We avoided the two seats near the toilet at the very front of the plane. But unknown to us Virgin changed our seats and put us oooon the seats 1 and two next to the toilets. This has taken away our choice and we are extremely unhappy they did this. They have ruined our 45th wedding anniversary.

Paid 3500.00 for upper class flight..to have the likes Charlotte working in upper class walk over covered in tattoos after itching and scratching her face arms etc..say "do you wanna eat ?" I have to ask where has the etiquette gone ? Having paid so much for a flight the question should be hi what can I get you for your meal today..not do you wanna eat..and then I can reply having seen your lack of hygiene and body scratching no thankyou..upper class on virgin has gone to a 1/10