How reliable are Virgin when it comes to guaranteeing "reserved seats"?

[Mike Jones]

I've not flown with Virgin yet, so no 'personal' advice, but you can see layouts of the seating for particular aircraft on the virgin atlantic website (here)

Mike

 

[Scotfan]

We had a bad experience with virgin in 2002, we had booked a fly / cruise package through Princess, with a week free to stay at DD timeshare pre cruise, and on our BA flight down to Gatwick we were split up 2, 3, 1. Got to Twilight check in again to be split up 2,3,1 ( I had phoned to get pre assigned seats at 180 days out). We complained and he gave us 3 & 3 behind.
On the way home from Miami again we had 3,2,1 and they refused to do a thing about it (again had been pre booked at 180 days). I was mad.
Phoned a friend who worked for BA and got our internal flight changed to 3&3.

To cut an already long story short, it turns out that to keep costs down Princess had made 3 separate bookings and they couldnt link them or some other unlikely story, no apology, no nothing.

 

[amf]

Originally posted by sharon78
So everyone,what are the best seats to pre-book?flying from LGW at 11.15am on flight vs027,flying economy ,family of 4 myself DH 2XDD 7&9

Have a mooch around Virgin Flyer and you will see seat recommendations

 

[sharon78]

Thanks Mike

Thanks Amf

 

[BiGGy]

We had a problem with this 'pre requesting' of seats. Going out was fine, but coming back we used downtown check in and we were told our seats were taken. Even thou we were there not long after it had opened.

I wasn’t happy because i didn’t want anyone sitting behind us because the visit before we had major problems with a family behind us so we by choice 'pre requested' the seats by the toilet.

After a long chat about how i wasn’t going to accept the fact we were going to be split up they were able to get us into the seats we had 'pre requested'.

Asked how we now could have them seats because they had already been taken she just asked if we wanted them or not.

Using virgin again November and just pre requested the seats so fingers crossed


Rgds

Chas

 

[Muppet]

Well, until last Friday we always got our reserved seats. Not this time. Not even close. Because I let Nic deal with all the check in proceedures I didn't notice we had totally different seats. We were 10th in the queue as well.

On the way back was worse. We had to be bumped from our flight to a later one(urgent hospital visit). When we came back checked in and they said they had seated us together as Nic had a head injury and needed to be kept an eye on. Blah he was sat on the end of row 58 and me on the end of 56.

Until this time we always had our reserved seats.

 

[Celestine]

Reserving your seat is definitely not guaranteed. Last October we were bumped from one Virgin flight to another & although we were assured our reservations had moved, it seems it only happened one way. What that meant was on the return leg they tried seating my niece (6) completely separate to us(our booking was originally for 3, but then we added my niece, so had 2 bookings)! We did point out that this was not acceptable & the person for Virgin was so horrendous I felt like getting out my shovel & digging! There were unable to move anyone to accomodate us so we end up with 2 x 2 away from each other. Maybe we should have let them fly our niece on her own & then gone to the tabloids!

 

[Hilary]

Sorry to be negative on this one but, in eight flights with Virgin, we have been given our requested seats only twice, and that was the time there were only two of us travelling. On the last three trips (six flights) I have called exactly 180 days out to make our requests.

(To be fair to Virgin, I'm not sure that I actually made any requests the first trip so it may be two successful requests out of six, rather than eight.)

We returned yesterday from our most recent trip and didn't get the requested seats on either leg, although on the return flight we did check-in very early and managed to get two bulkhead seats instead of the alternatives we'd been assigned

On the way out I was asking the girl at check-in why Virgin bothered with seat requests when, in our experience, they were so rarely successful requests. She didn't know. She checked our return flight details and could tell us there and then that we hadn't been allocated our requests for the return flight either.

I remember queueing behind two women checking in with Virgin at Orlando once and heard them asking if they could be allocated two of the rear seats where the rows change. The check-in girl explained that they had all been allocated. They persisted and kicked up a bit of a fuss, and the two seats they wanted magically became available right before their eyes . Whoever had requested them obviously didn't get them that time.

 

[Mike Jones]

They persisted and kicked up a bit of a fuss, and the two seats they wanted magically became available right before their eyes . Whoever had requested them obviously didn't get them that time.

...so the message here sems to be - kick up a hell of a fuss and you may get your seats!

 

[cheryl.UK]

We have almost always been given different seats on the return journey.

We make use of twilight check -in or arrive early on the outbound flight but usually turn up 3 hours prior to the return flight.

When I asked about this one time I was told it was to enable family groups to sit together, as a couple we aren't seen as a priority. At this point I went ballistic!!!!! I pointed out that we fly PE so that we aren't sitting with someone else, (usually splitting a family), we are freequent fliers, splitting us means that we have, once before, sat in isolation from each other by 14 rows and the width of the plane and that this would now be exasperated by their request not to stand in the isles. They bumped us to first class