Do VH ever have PE upgrades reduced?

[Hilary]

DH and I have booked a fly drive tour to San Francisco in October with Virgin Holidays and I would dearly love to upgrade to PE for such long flights but really can't justify an extra £1,300 (return for both of us) Frustratingly, we've got enough VA Flying Club miles to upgrade, but they can't be used for flights booked with VH

Do VH have sales for extras like upgrades?

 

[Lizzybear]

They do sometimes.. I remember in September 2007 just before our trip (literally the week before, very last minute) they reduced PE to something like £100 each way, though i'm not sure how often this happens.
ETA: Just reread and realised you said VH, this was for VA (we couldn't take advantage of it for that reason) Hope someone else can be more helpful

 

[Claire L]

Not usually as they only have a small allocation of seats and for the Heathrow routes I would think a reduced upgrade price would be unlikely.

Claire

 

[islandmum]

I#ve heard its pretty much never done as if they started to do it frequently why would anyone BUY PE at full prices - they would just take he chance and buy economy and then take advantage of the PE discount later on.

PE is the best earner for Virgin and most often is full, upgrades are rare but do happen if Econ is overbooked for example.

 

[Frances999]

The PE cabin on the SFO route has always been full or near-full when we've travelled (circ. 30 trips...). I know you said you can't justify the extra cost, but remember that the LHR route uses airbus planes. The PE cabin is so much nicer than on the MCO route, especially the new seats and foot rests.

I think the chance of picking up a sale fare is extremely unlikely, unfortunately...

 

[Hilary]

Thanks for the response, everyone.

I know you said you can't justify the extra cost, but remember that the LHR route uses airbus planes. The PE cabin is so much nicer than on the MCO route, especially the new seats and foot rests.

I was already tempted, Frances - I don't need any more encouragement!

I think I've decided (for now, anyway!) that I have to keep in mind the fact that an extra £1,300 is enough for a week in Florida for me and DH (with DVC). So to choose to spend it on PE seats to California would mean one less trip to Florida. That's got to be a no-brainer, hasn't it?

 

[Hilary]

Well, I've had a complete turn-around on this and I've just booked PE miles+money flights!

I talked it through in a talk-me-out-of-it way with DH, but he was clearly just as tempted as I was, so we decided to do it! I made preliminary enquiries to VA and VH to make sure I could do what we wanted and find out the final costs involved, and I've just come off the phone from making the changes.

It's working out less expensive to do booking PE m+m, rather than upgrading with VH, so I've cancelled the fly-drive part of the booking we had with them. We'll end up with PE flights on miles+money booked with VA, accommodation booked with VH and we'll book the car ourselves (which we'd prefer because we can choose the deal that suits us best, rather than being limited to Dollar).

That's got to be a no-brainer, hasn't it?

Yeah, yeah, blah, blah. I admit I may have spoken too hastily!

DH and I are both really excited about deciding to go for PE ... just another six months to wait!