Schedule airline prices, budget airline service
Written: Apr 08 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: At least they didn't lose my baggage
Cons: Total disregard to human biological requirements
The Bottom Line: Don't do it but if you have to, seek adequate sedation from your GP and don't expect anything form the staff.
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| marciamallow's Full Review: Varig |
I had a fairly interesting position of being in Business Class London-Sao Paulo-Rio and Economy Class back the other way.
Most of my flying experience has been with European and Asia-Pacific airlines. So the service I received on VARIG was nothing less than a shock and left me thinking that Star Alliance are really doing themselves a disservice by associating with this airline. I guess their inclusion was purely strategic more than for any kudos they might have got...
Business Class was not much better than any other scheduled airline's economy class.
I was given a choice of either welcome champagne or orange juice. I took the champagne (naturally) and it was okay. The food menu was actually pretty good and I have to admit, I was fed properly. I had a two-course meal of salad followed by a kind of lamb dish. The fact that it was practically thrown at me by a surly staff member who mumbled with a heavy accent kind of ruined it. He acted as though his face would crack if he smiled.
As for the inflight entertainment, unless you speak Portuguese, you better take something with you. I'm all for plugging one's own national culture so I'm not complaining that they were playing a Brazilian film. But the only subtitles were in Spanish which seemed a little odd since the flight was ex-LHR. At least they had the foresight to show a feature presentation in Business (see economy below).
My return Economy Class flight was nothing less than the flight from Hell. Literally. The air conditioning was severely malfunctioning and the whole aircraft was like a sauna.
After flying out of Rio - late - we arrived at our Sao Paulo stopover. On the way to Rio, we were allowed off the plane to have a little walkaround. Not so this time as the time margin was too tight. Fair enough. But by the time we left Sao Paulo, I had been on the aircraft for 5 and a half hours. In that time, I had been offered a plastic cup of water. Remember, it was Brazil and the plane had near non-existent aircon.
Finally the one meal we were getting came around on the trolley (gravy train?) and it was the usual rubbish Italian chicken with rice airline thing (from memory) and either a glass of water or juice or something stronger (from a choice of three spirits only). Being seriously dehydrated, I had to ask for a couple of top-ups which were given pretty grudgingly.
As for the entertainment, I had the opportunity to catch a little bit of locally-produced Brazilian TV during my stay. It was pretty bad and I challenged fate to show me something worse. Cue, VARIG's in-flight TV channel. It might have been a little more interesting if I could get the headset I was given to work and hear the translation. But then, did I really need to see old Carnival footage on a loop for seven or so hours?
The service was even worse than that experienced in Business Class. One of the strangest things was that the staff will not permit you to use CD of DVD players even when cruising as other airlines do. I saw one passenger get quite a telling off by one staff member in a manner I thought unnecessarily rude.
All in all, my one and only experience with VARIG left me feeling angry enough to evangelise about it. VARIG is officially my new least favourite airline.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
marciamallow
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
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