Does anyone not bother with pre booking seats on the aircraft

[Lizzy Lemon]

I know lots of people ask about choosing a particular seat on the aircraft and its coming up to the 336 days mark when we can. All DH is bothered about is sitting together, but I've read some horrendous stories about people have the person in front reclined in their space and quite fancy the seats with no one in front. I just don't know what to do. I've been told to ring the Special Needs assistance department up because of Ashley's special needs (not physical, but he needs someone with him) but then I've also read that Virgin will try and keep families together anyway. I'm a real wimp on the phone and if I end up speaking to someone abroad will probably just give up and hope for the best. I think I've got to do this on the phone as we booked with Thomas Cook and not directly with Virgin so haven't got any reference numbers. We are staying at the Radisson the night before and plan on being at check in as soon as possible on the day of travel.
Ramble over - what would you do? ps can't afford PE.

 

[Girlsontour]

Don't know about on the phone, Wendy. I have always accessed the screen with Virgin Atlantic - when are our dates available? I worked it out to be 30th November??

 

[castanea1985]

Wendy,
Have you tried putting your Thomas Cook booking reference number in, on the Virgin Atlantic website??
We booked indirectly with Opodo and the booking ref from Opodo, works fine on the Virgin site!
Maybe worth a try.. or else try phoning Virgin direct, I'm sure they'll accommodate you.
Tracy

 

[Girlsontour]

Wendy - you got me thinking and counting and i worked it out to be 9th November for us....that's 3 days time!! Phoned for our locator number to virgin reservations and someone in the "lovely" call centre said the number wouldn't be released until 15th November. Now i know that's only a difference of 6 days but i am beginning to fret!! Like you said i am hopeless on the phone mainly because i can't understand what they are saying ....wish i could talk to someone, anyone, in this country.........are you listening Richard Branson

 

[Lizzy Lemon]

Got ours noted on the calendar for 25th November (336 days from the return journey). Not keen on speaking to anyone on the phone as I've found from experience you are sometimes told one thing and then find out from someone else something completely different. Maybe we should start a petition to get the call centres back in UK! Too early to try the booking reference as it won't show up on the Virgin site yet.

I'm dreading making the ADR's when the time comes.

ps I've read somewhere that they open up the booking window on a Wednesday so 15th November would be the first Wednesday after the date you are eligible to apply.

 

[Girlsontour]

I'm dreading making the ADR's when the time comes.

Ditto

 

[Lizzybear]

ps I've read somewhere that they open up the booking window on a Wednesday so 15th November would be the first Wednesday after the date you are eligible to apply.

Yep this is correct. Just prebooked mine on the nearest Wednesday after and only the very back row was taken, managed to get a set of 2 at the back both ways for me and Steve

 

[misspickle]

hi wendy we are in the same boat as you, i tried doing the booking thru thomas cook but they had said phone ba i phoned ba and got nowhere they said try kuoni but not sure if its excatly booked as they haven't sent anything in writing,as we are needing a basinette (sp) but i was told first come first serve from ba. so just have to wait and see what happens.

 

[nibbo]

Hi

We've prebooked seats with Virgin both times we've gone. Going out there has been no problem, however, the last time we came back they were not honouring any prebooked seat allocations due to being way overbooked and having to transfer people down to Miami to catch a flight back to Heathrow. We were really annoyed especially as we were split into 2 seats near the window and 2 seats in the centre isle. They weren't even in the same row! Our 2 DD's were in the row in front of us by the window whilst we sat in the centre isle behind. Luckily the person they sat with was really nice and they enjoyed being independant from us. I think they behaved better than if they sat with us!!
Prebooking is never guaranteed with Virgin, something to do with being scheduled and not chartered flights....I think that's why they don't make a charge for it...unlike the other charter carriers.

Nick

 

[Lizzy Lemon]

Thats just awful they split you up from your children. If they did that to us it would mean one of us with one son and the other with our second son. We daren't leave them together for a second, they fight 9/10ths of the time!!! With Ashley having problems with his speech and language one of us needs to be with him, it's just on a 9 hour journey we really wanted to be together as most people do, of course. I'm just going to have to pluck up courage and ring the special needs line and beg and cajole and hope the call centre is in this country and they understand my predicament.

 

[JohnnySharp2]

Hi Wendy,

They should allocate bulkhead seats in Economy for special needs children/families.
Although nowadays we fly PE the majority of our time we have had bulkhead seats in Economy, Virgin have always been extremely helpful to us in the past and I would be amazed if you didn't get a positive response.

It shouldn't matter who you booked with, I would contact Virgin direct.

 

[Lisash]

Hi Wendy

You should still be able to pre book seating even after booking through agent, we have done for our New York trip next year. We got our reference off the copy of the Virgin confirmation we got from the agent - I dont think you necessarily need a booking reference anyway just your name date and flight number. If you do just ask your agent they should be able to give it to you

 

[motheroftink]

We booked our holiday earlier this year through an agent, but were able to pre-book our seats on the website for the outward and return journeys. If I remember correctly on looking at our holiday invoices and confirmations, we had one reference for the agent, and another Virgin ref, which was the one I used on the VA site to pre-book the seats.