Virgin and pre-booked seats

[flowrida]

Hi there,

Has anyone pre-booked their seats on a flight with Virgin and found that when they got to check-in their pre-booked seats weren't honoured?

Grateful for any comments.

 

[Red-Snapper]

Yes I would say on about a third of our trips we have not had the seats we booked.

Having said that this hasnt happend the past couple of years where we now book PE seats.

 

[Celestine]

Yep - prebooking apparently is "only a request". Once they tried to sit my niece (7 at the time) on her own several rows away from us! Naturally we turned into the passengers from hell & were eventually sat as three lots of two. All other times, there've been no problems.

 

[AnitaCB]

I booked my mums for her Virgin flight to Barbados earlier this month and they were honoured. She was also asked if she wanted to keep the ones she had or change to other seats. She did notice however that the plane was not full.

 

[Hilary]

Has anyone pre-booked their seats on a flight with Virgin and found that when they got to check-in their pre-booked seats weren't honoured?

Yes, we've had about a 75% 'failure' rate Interestingly, the successful flights were those with only two passengers, the others were either 4 or 12 - not sure if that's significant!

I still go through the motions of pre-requesting seats, but I now assume they're going to be changed at check-in. It certainly doesn't ruin our trip, but it does annoy me that the facility to pre-request is offered when there's (in our experience) a good chance it won't be honoured. However, others have had more success than us, so maybe our experience isn't typical.

 

[carolfoy]

I've had about a 50/50 success rate, will also add that many other airlines haven't honoured it either!! I always state to my clients that its a request not a guarantee

 

[princess jackson]

Good Luck, we are having trouble try to book our seats we have a 4year old.

Tried online but the site is not reconising our ref number, so i rang and got a new number, yet again this did not work, so when ringing, they tried to book us in different rows.

Needless to say we said no.

We have to wait until the day to hopefully get our seats together.

 

[jen_uk]

Ive always gotten the seats I requested.

 

[Frances999]

We have always received our exact pre-requested seats.

 

[Kevin Stringer]

I'm the same as Hilary. I think we get our pre-booked seats about 25% of the time. I know it is not a reservation and cannot be guaranteed, but if it is not honoured the majority of times you use it, then it should be scrapped.

I've even had our seats changed when using twilight check-in.

Kev

 

[Hilary]

I know it is not a reservation and cannot be guaranteed, but if it is not honoured the majority of times you use it, then it should be scrapped.

Oh dear, you've got me started now!

I agree, Kev. I fully understand that these are only requests but, when the requests are only for 50 or 60% of the plane, I find it hard to understand why it's apparently so difficult to honour those requests. If the whole plane was requested, then it would be easier to see why some switching around would be inevitable at check in.

What I find particularly galling is when the check-in staff bow to 'squeaky wheel syndrome' and switch passengers into someone else's requested seat just because they make a fuss until they get what they want (and the scenario I witnessed was two able bodied adults, not a family who didn't want to be split up).

As carol says, it's not just Virgin who do this, and I've had 100% success with charter airlines where you pay to request your seat .

 

[flowrida]

Thanks for all the responses. It is only the two of us going this time so hopefully we'll be lucky. Fingers crossed!

Mind you, bearing in mind where we're heading.... at the end of the day don't really care where we sit providing we get there quickly!

 

[Hilary]

at the end of the day don't really care where we sit providing we get there quickly!

couldn't agree more!

 

[mattnkatsmum]

I would definitely check them online if possible. We flew to Barbados recently with Virgin and I checked out our seats a couple of days. I noticed that there were whole batches of unreserved seats so I changed our seats to some slap bang in the middle of the unreserved ones. Not only did we get those seats but we had rows to ourselves and the undivided attention of the cabin crew in that section! I also recommend checking in on line as that saved loads of time.

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

I'm the same as Hilary. I think we get our pre-booked seats about 25% of the time. I know it is not a reservation and cannot be guaranteed, but if it is not honoured the majority of times you use it, then it should be scrapped.

I've even had our seats changed when using twilight check-in.

Kev

Well, we get our pre booked seats 100% of the time, it works every time for us!

 

[Claire L]

We have always had the seats we requested or better ones either through us changing at checkin or VA giving us the emergency exit seats in economy or upgrading us for various reasons

Claire