Were VS ever much good?
I wonder whether people are fondly remembering VS through rose-tinted spectacles.
In the early years of VS I was a regular customer, always in Upper Class. Superficially the cabin service was impressive, at least when measured against the poor standard of BA at that time.
But when things went wrong, they went wrong big time. Yes, all airlines have delays, but after a while I felt that VS were tricksy and mendacious in trying to avoid rebooking pax during Irrops.
Twice on BOS-LON sectors I happily checked in only to (eventually) find out that the flights were delayed by many hours. On both occasions VS only admitted to a delay once all alternative flights on other carriers had left BOS. In both cases, neither plane had actually left LON on the inbound leg when I checked in (but in the pre-internet days you had little opportunity to check such things). And the really irritating thing was the photocopied 'original' letter from Branson expressing his concern about the delay. Of course, as VS didn't admit to any delay until other airlines' flights had left, you were left with no alternative but to sit it out and wait.
Shortly afterwards VS tried to do the same to me ex-JFK. By then I had wised up to their tricks and got them to admit the real extent of the delay. I got them to endorse my ticket over to BA and I'm afraid that was my last booking with VS.
I simply don't trust them, and the general level of the comments on Skytrax suggest I am not alone.