Special Report
Virgin Atlantic – it’s all in the detail
A red-uniformed crew member welcomes visitors to Virgin Atlantic’s LGW headquarters. Her cardboard cut-out reminds me of an usherette serving ice cream in the cinema. Jo Austin reports
This is exactly the message that the airline wants to get across, explains Simon Soni, head of inflight services at Virgin Atlantic Airways: “Our new Economy service
is all part of the theatre and entertainment atmosphere we want to get over to our customers. Virgin Atlantic has always been about fun and we want to add some glamour to the inflight experience.” Simon’s first challenge when joining the
airline about two years ago was to build a new team to work on the project of refreshing the inflight service across the fleet. The new product offering was to be part of Virgin Atlantic’s £100 million product investment which will also see a revamp of Upper Class later this year. The team talked to
customers and crew to find out just what it was they wanted to experience during their flight, especially as the airline’s new Jam IFE was already getting such good reviews. The team was to start in the Economy
cabin and an expert panel of industry designers from the Netherlands-based Helios group was brought in to work alongside. Overall the project has taken 18 months with visits from Helios sometimes on a weekly basis. Overseeing the project for Helios is Cindy Lam, md of the Hong Kong office. Cindy has put in a fair number of air miles over the last 18 months and continues to work on a new Virgin Upper Class service, coming soon. Says Cindy: “We
were approached
by Simon Soni during ITCA 2009 in Cologne
38
www.onboardhospitality.com
“Our new Economy service is all part of the theatre and entertainment atmosphere we want to get over to our customers”
to help Virgin Atlantic ‘refresh’ all its catering equipment. Three suppliers were invited to bid for the consultancy service and Helios was eventually selected to work alongside Virgin and the key stakeholders; from design to crew, to inflight, logistics and procurement. “We became a part of the team, working
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