Does anyone know what the Class Categories mean on Virgin Airlines?

mrsvicx

Hello all - sorry for the exhaustive post!

This may be a stupid question, but I haven't flown for several years, and never with Virgin.

We booked flights in February, through an agent flying to Orlando in August with Virgin. All fine, details confirmed, the Class category was X (which I kind of ignored, as I thought it was as standard).

We reserved our seats successfully at 60 days prior to flight and managed to get the coveted row 79 upstairs (I did lots of reading around where was best to sit and made sure that we were first in line for these seats when they were released).

I wanted to have a quick check of our booking this morning (they have a countdown!) and was unable to log in. So I checked our online booking confirmation with our travel agent and saw that our booking reference number with Virgin had changed. I was still none the wiser, but when I then logged into our booking on the Virgin website, our seat reservations had been removed and were now unavailable.

Luckily I managed to book the row in front, so didnt have to separate our party of 5, but was still pretty disappointed that this had happened (I know that seat reservations are not guaranteed, but I have not heard of anyone yet that had their seats changed).

I contacted the travel agent and he said that it was probably done by Virgin, but couldnt tell us why. I have noticed this afternoon, on checking the booking again, that the Class Category has been changed from X to O.

Does anyone know what this means? And why it would have been changed?

Thanks all
mrsvicx x

philip1988

X and O are fare codes. The most expensive in economy is Y (and therefore most flexible) and the cheapest is O (and therefor the least flexible)

http://v-flyer.com/the-toolbox/fare-codes?code=X

The link will explain each of the codes for you. Don't know why you have been changed from X to O and your seats were removed. May be you should ask Virgin. Whether it be X or O you will have the same economy seat.

photome

Dont know why the catergory has changed but I have had my seats moved by Virgin and most other airlines, many times before check in

slightlyconfused1

I had my seat reservations changed by Virgin with no explanation. I am also denied online check in with them (the last three years). No idea why. It's only Virgin that do this to me I often fly BA and KLM and they are fine. To be honest it doesn't really matter as long as you get there safely.

photome

slightlyconfused1 wrote: »

I had my seat reservations changed by Virgin with no explanation. I am also denied online check in with them (the last three years). No idea why. It's only Virgin that do this to me I often fly BA and KLM and they are fine. To be honest it doesn't really matter as long as you get there safely.

in my experience KLM change seat reservations more often than Virgin.

flying with KLm next month and have lost count how many times they have changed my seat since booking months ago

richardw

It might have something to do with aircraft refurbishment, but this is just a guess.

m0t

I had this last year when flying to Japan with virgin. Our situation was complicated because my girlfriend and I had booked separately and they switched us to other ends of the plane.

They told us that if the aircraft is changed for whatever reason (in our case the original plane was taken out of service for a refurb) the seating system resets everyones seats.

mrsvicx

Thanks for all your replies.

I wasn't especially bothered that they had changed our seats, I know that nothing is definite until we are actually sitting in the seats, it was more the fact that they had cancelled our reserved seating without allocating us any others, or even letting us know they were doing it!! If I hadn't happened to check them today (or until check in) then there was a danger that we wouldn't get seats together. Wouldn't normally be a huge issue, but our party of five contains a child and two (extremely) nervous flyers!!!

InsideInsurance

I'd be querying it with the travel agent.

Is it a virgin flight or a code share?

ferf1223

we have also had seats reassigned on Virgin and once (London to Sydney) were split up in the seats they put us in - we were booked on one itinerary...it was sorted out at check-in (and we got bulkhead seats too) but it made me more paranoid than usual and I check about once a month then every week in the last month...at least...just to be sure that if there is a change of aircraft or some other reason that we are moved that we have a chance to put ourselves somewhere we are happy with.

It has happened to us a few times since then - not often, but it does happen even without an aircraft change.

skippyste

Having worked for Virgin one of my big gripes was the way they messed around with customer seating with no logic. While I appreciate it's a worry generally most staff will ensure you're not seated apart. But being sat together doesn't mean you get a window and aisle...someone has to sit in the middle! I lost count of the times people refused a middle seat when coming to check in two hours before the flight!

Some seating is held off until online check-in opens so I would always recommend leaving your panic until you've seen what's available when online check-in opens. NEVER EVER leave check-in until the airport if you've reserved your seats, they WILL get released.