Lost my Virgin seat allocation - Help

[dtm316]

Hi All,

I've had our seats reserved on the virgin flight from Manchester on sept 19th since the seat map became available for the A330 and specifically chose the seats at the back of Premium Economy as my wife has a bad back and is usually in pain when she sits up straight and we don't like to inconvenience other passengers by putting the seat back which is why we always choose the seats on the back row.
However just by chance I checked last night and my seat reservation has been lost, only seats that are showing as available now are some of the seats of 3 in the middle of the cabin.

I know that they can cancel seat requests at any point but I'm slightly annoyed that we weren't even notified that they'd been lost and if I hadn't checked I don't know what seats would have been available at the time of online checkin.

My big question is what do you think my chances are of pinching my original seats back when on-line checkin opens!?!? or even getting virgin to allocate these seats back to me?

 

[2Tiggies]

Your chances are probably fair if this has happened to most/all passengers in PE. When you say you have lost your seat allocation do you mean that it shows that you have no seat pre selected at all?

We had ours changed last year on the day before we flew, although it worked in our favour as they had given us better seats than the ones we originally requested.

I suppose you could phone them and find out if it is simply a system glitch that is showing the seating plan up as it is or if the seats are actually 'gone'

 

[Netty]

This happened to us a couple of weeks ago, we are flying out from Manchester on the 21st September in economy - we had requested our seats - there are 11 of us going out, we selected row 26, sil went online to find all our 11 seats had gone due to plane configuration.. no other seats had been selected for us so we re selected and are now scattered around the plane. so we will do olci the day before when more seats are released and hope we get a better choice
I also have a bad back and usually fly in pe but due to the prices cant do it this year! why dont you phone special assistance and see if they can help you
The seats are only requests and not guaranteed, it would be better if they either honour the seats or took the choice away from us!

 

[orangetiggs]

If your wife needs specific seats call special assistance up and get them to sort your seats out that way they are guarenteed

When seats are booked on the website they dont notify you that they have been moved, as these are. Ot guarenteed they can do what they want with them

When i worked there we had alot of calls re this

 

[techandy]

Hmmmm it appears that Virgin have done this across the board, as I reserved two seats in PE for our trip 2-10th Sep about 6 months ago on G-VSXY - then I got a text and email to say that due to an error our seat reservation may have been lost… I was on my computer and that very second logged on and *BANG* they had gone and the only seats left I could reserve together were centre seats at the mid - back of the PE section…

I WAS TOTALLY FUMING… I had pre-reserved seats at row 2 A&B for both legs, so to be in the centre (infact the system only had odd seats showing unblocked) was very very annoying, especially given the PE price had dropped by about £300 from my "booking offer" … which obviously wasn't that much of an offer… ghhhrrr

STILL I'm looking forward to flying on G-VSXY, having flown back last year with Lufthansa Business, and recall looking longingly at the VS-747 at the opposite gate that would get us back home Sunday morning instead of Sunday evening with a 6 hour wait at Frankfurt… I'd have traded business for economy seats in that 747 at that moment….

This will be my first ever time flying Virgin Atlantic, I'm hopeful, but reading vflyer fourms I'm actually prepared to be disappointed… :-/ and almost feel bad that I didn't spend the money on shoring up Thomas Cook Airways, but didn't fancy flying into SFB, and TCX have dropped PE now...

 

[dtm316]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I've spoken to customer services and the reason they are giving is that the aircraft scheduled for this flight has been changed due to operational reasons, however the annoying thing with that is that they've replaced it with the exact same model so the seat config is exactly the same, but this still means that my original request has been removed and I didn't have any selected. I had the same issue as you techandy where the majority of seats left when I went to select them again were individual ones. As it stands I've had to take my chances and book 2 seats in one of the row of 3's in the middle that still had seats left and hope that they don't re-assign them to a family, customer services only suggestion is to speak to the agent at the check-in desk when we arrive at the airport.

However I might chance my arm with special assistance orangetiggs to see if they class her as a special case, which I have a feeling they may not as it's just pain rather than a disability but shy bairns and all that

UPDATE:
Spoken to medical assistance and it may look like the reason we have lost our seats to begin with is that the back row of premium economy is now no longer available to be pre-selected, the agent in Virgin said that this is not showing up on her system and will be allocated at check-in at the airport. Guess we just have to get there early to make sure

 

[crabbie1]

This is one reason I was worried about booking through CO as they wont release our booking number to us till tickets are issued hence couldnt book seats.However as my mom will have her wheel chair which she only needs when lots of walking is involved and plus keeps me sane knowing I can do one half of epcot in one day a little quicker than a snail.Anyway they gave me the VA special assistance number and they booked our seats for us back in april when I booked. I did ask the question what happens if the plane is changed and they said to check 24 hours before and to give them a ring. Going in november it may not be full so they said and there is still availibility at the moment.
Not fare when you have booked so far in advance though as the guy above did for his wife and loose your seats to someone that my have only booked a few days ago especially if the seat config is exactly the same.
As long as we have 2 isle seats thats all we wanted and not in the middle.

 

[penlanspice]

This has happened to us several times with Virgin and it's really annoying when you book months and months in advance but as they say it's not a guarantee.

When we got to the airport on our last trip we were a party of 8 (2 separate bookings) we originally had seats together and when we got to twilight check-in we had been split apart, the check-in agent had a disgraceful attitude and we then when to the virgin desk where the guy tried to help us, but as the flight was practically full all the seats had been allocated. I checked our seats on-line about 3 days previous and they were still there it was after this they were changed.

 

[dizzyhead]

This has just happened to us as well, we are travelling on 14th October, having read your post l checked my seats and sure enough we had lost the seats.
I spent the afternoon in the virgin store trying to get it sorted, we have ended with separate seats as there was no alternatives left, we booked the back row as my husband is always ill on the plane, and the back is better for him.

This made no difference to what they were offering, we have paid a lot of money for PE, booked seats months in advance and has lost them with not even an email from virgin to tell us.

Will just hope we can get them together on check in.

 

[Netty]

This has just happened to us as well, we are travelling on 14th October, having read your post l checked my seats and sure enough we had lost the seats.
I spent the afternoon in the virgin store trying to get it sorted, we have ended with separate seats as there was no alternatives left, we booked the back row as my husband is always ill on the plane, and the back is better for him.

This made no difference to what they were offering, we have paid a lot of money for PE, booked seats months in advance and has lost them with not even an email from virgin to tell us.

Will just hope we can get them together on check in.

not all the seats are released at the moment. they release the other 40% the day before so you should try online check in 24 hrs before you fly

 

[dizzyhead]

Is it possible to change your seats when you do on line check in, last year my son did all this for us, but this year he is going out 2 weeks before us so l am being left to do it.

 

[Netty]

Is it possible to change your seats when you do on line check in, last year my son did all this for us, but this year he is going out 2 weeks before us so l am being left to do it.

Yes you can, I have done it before on previous trips

 

[Eliza32]

We had similar problems last year - particularly with the return flight - we confirmed the seats online 24 hrs before we were due to fly home, but when we got to check-in at DTD, they wouldn't honour the seats and tried to split us (just the 2 of us flying). Anyway, I went through being polite, being slightly less polite, then lost it - the supervisor came over and put us in our original confirmed seat. No idea why the check-in guy couldn't do it...maybe a training issue??

 

[dtm316]

By all accounts they have decided that you can't pre-select the back row of PE as well as Economy so anyone who had seats selected on the back row has lost them, but it would have been nice to have been informed of this fact so that those that had reserved the seats months in advance actually get the chance to pick seats together before it's too late. on the outbound and inbound flights there are no seats of two left on the side so we've had to select the row of 3 in the middle, still together for now but may get moved for a family. Will have to try and secure the back row at check-in

 

[dizzyhead]

it would of been polite of them just to email people, as if this was not posted on here l would not of known about it until l checked in, then l would of been in a panic, just hope l can change them, l will be in DTD as soon as l can, as l don't know how l can do on line check whilst l am at AKL, as it is the return journey that effects us the most.

 

[joanne74]

This seems to be pretty common with Virgin then! We had the exact same problem when we flew to Kenya last summer. Everything had been booked online and I chose our seats straight after booking the flights but just a couple of weeks before we flew our selection disappeared. When I rang up I was told the aircraft had been changed. We ended up with 4 seats in the middle of the way out (I hate sitting in the middle!) but were lucky to get window seats on the way home. Hoping for no problems when we go to Disney in October. Hope you manage to get the seats you want!

 

[RDP]

I have never had my pre booked seat honoured, I now don't bother and usually try to book the extra legroom seat at twilight checkin.