online checkin/seat selection?

[kpfran]

Hi all,
please help if you can on the following,

I have selected my seats with Virgin via "manage your flights"Now i know these are not gauranteed,However when you checkin online 24 hrs before does it offer you your pre selected seats for confirmation or does it just throw any old seat selection at you,leaving you to change back to the origanel ones if they are available.
Also can you only get onto the online checkin no earlier than exactly 24hrs before your flight.Or will it let you in straight after midnight the day before?
Thanks for all the help.
kevin

 

[Frances999]

It offers your pre-selected seats if you use the online check-in service. It is exactly 24 hours before your flight when the online check-in opens for your specific flight #. Hope this helps.

 

[kristieuk]

Frances is exaclty right - check in is not available until exactly 24 hours before, and your pre-selected seats will automatically appear.

 

[kpfran]

Thankyou both for the help.
Are you then gauranteed the seats if you confirm them with the online checkin or is there a chance you get to the airport to find you have been allocated something else?Thanks again

kevin.

 

[kristieuk]

Once you are checked in, it means you can print your boarding pass, or pick it up at the airport - this gives you some 'security', but it's the same as when you check in normally at the airport and get your boarding passes, if there was some reason why someone else with priority needed your seats, you could have to give them up.

 

[Bellis Belle]

How far in advance can you select your seats???

 

[gilld]

We have had our seats changed with an Argentinian Airline actually at the gate after giving in our boarding passes. The change was for the better though, from Economy to Business Class.

 

[kristieuk]

How far in advance can you select your seats???

It might be worth giving them a call, but usually, it's as soon as the flight is 'official' ie about 360 days out, once the actual flight has been confirmed (with fly drives, you can often book before this time, but the flight part doesn't get confirmed until they release the timetables for the next year).

 

[Goofyish]

If you have booked your flight indirect (i.e. with Virgin Holidays for example), you will have to wait until they pass your booking details through to Virgin Atlantic before being able to reserve your seating preference on the website.

You can call Virging Holidays (or the company you have booked with) and ask them to pass you details through to VA if they are a bit slow in doing so

 

[Kirstytwin]

Just a word of caution, we pre selected our seats for our last Virgin flight in May and did the online check in 24hrs before departure.

As soon as we checked in our seats were changed back to the original ones that Virgin chose for us.

We phoned Virgin and had to fight and argue for over an hour to get back our seats.

We will now not do online check in.

Kirsty

 

[UKPhil]

We had the same experience as Kirstytwin last March and also won't use on-line check-in again.

Virgin told us we had "offloaded" ourselves from the flight. There is no option on screen to do this so I can only conclude that there were bugs in their software. Fortunately we were at the airport when we tried to use the on-line checkin so we went down to the twilight check-in desk and they sorted it out, but we lost our seats which had been booked for months and we ended up with the four of us seperated.

Never again.

 

[angel659]

Has anyone found if the didnt check in on line most of the seats together were gone? I am worried that if we dont check in on line then we wont be able to sit together. We are travelling with 2 adults 5 year old and twin boys who are 23 months old.

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

Has anyone found if the didnt check in on line most of the seats together were gone? I am worried that if we dont check in on line then we wont be able to sit together. We are travelling with 2 adults 5 year old and twin boys who are 23 months old.

It all depends on how full your flight is going to be.

 

[angel659]

I would love to but my printer has run out of ink also my dh isnt sure that this is the only problem with the printer.

 

[Laurafoster]

If there are Children in the party under the age of 16 they usually try to seat you all together! sometimes this may be accross an aisle though!

 

[angel659]

Anyone else had problems with on line check in?

 

[crystalprincess]

I plan to use the online check in facility next Thursday, and would like to know if anyone has a good experience of this...?!