Virgin Seat Selection

[epcot.girl]

I just logged on to Virgin Atlantic to make my seat requests. The flight home was available but my flight out (26th August 2011) is unavailable already! Surely not?

 

[2Tiggies]

They don't release all the seats for pre booking. If you keep checking they may come open at some point if someone who has pre booked cancels/makes changes to their flight. Best option is to be at check in early. Otherwise, try again when you do OLCI 24 hours before departure.

 

[epcot.girl]

We'll be doing Twilight check-in and as long as we have seats together I'll be happy TBH - I was just so shocked that the seat map was unavailable already!

 

[wayneg]

Are you flying out on the new plane(A330-300)?

We have picked our seats outbound on the VS073 but it won't let us choose our return seats yet as we are coming back on the VS076 which is going to be the new A330-300.

 

[2Tiggies]

We'll be doing Twilight check-in and as long as we have seats together I'll be happy TBH - I was just so shocked that the seat map was unavailable already!

Twilight check in is even better. I did my seat selection for our October trip as soon as the flight maps opened up. In a couple of weeks there were no more options open to pre select though. It also depends how busy the flight is and I think when people book over the phone they don't always know they can go online to do this so if you happen to have more people doing phone bookings I would think (just guessing here) that there might be more odds of nabbing a seat location online beforehand.

 

[Marl]

We can't book our seats yet for next August, but like Wayne said it's because we are flying both directions on the new A330 aircraft.

 

[Andy-B]

Yea, the A330 300 seat selections are not available yet, but should open hopefully soon.

However, this year, my family and I had problems prebooking our seats, out and return, I ended up selecting a group of 3 seats and 1 on its own with strangers for our outbound flight, hoping that if we got to check-in early we would be able to change and get 4 seats together, as Virgin only allow prebooking of about 60% of seats on plane.

How wrong was I, we decided to try to check in online, however due to system fault this was not available, so we made sure we were at check in as it opened to get best chance of changing, only to be told "Sorry no seats available together" I said but you've only just opened and you only prebook 60%, The check in agent then went on to say "we have an automated system that allocates everyone that has not prebooked into seats approx 2 days before departure" this means whether you get to check in early or not, if you have not prebooked seats your seats will already be allocated to you by an automated system.

For the return flight I didn't have any option to prebook any seats in advance, so as normal we checked in at Downtown disney, and hey presto, as there was 4 of us, we got 4 seats together.

So for future reference, beware of this system of seat allocation.

 

[epcot.girl]

Are you flying out on the new plane(A330-300)?

We have picked our seats outbound on the VS073 but it won't let us choose our return seats yet as we are coming back on the VS076 which is going to be the new A330-300.

Ooh I don't know - how would I find this out? I booked with VH if that makes any difference. I'm excited now at the prospect of being on a new plane!

Andy-B - you've got me worried now lol. I'm hoping it won't happen to us as there are only two of us. I'd be a bit miserable about it as we're flying out for our wedding too - and I'm not great with taking off TBH. Oh well, we'll deal with that if it happens. Actually, I suppose if it did happen we could pay for exit row seats together or something. I know nothing's guaranteed though.

 

[wayneg]

Ooh I don't know - how would I find this out? I booked with VH if that makes any difference. I'm excited now at the prospect of being on a new plane!

Try this thread, I put links in post#11 with routes/flight numbers affected.
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2578677

 

[wayneg]

Welcome to DISboards Andrew.

 

[tennisfan]

We pre selected our seats on VA to Las Vegas only to find they allocated us other seats upon check in online

 

[epcot.girl]

Try this thread, I put links in post#11 with routes/flight numbers affected.
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2578677

A very belated thank you! Looks like I'm on an affected route. Mystery solved!

 

[skelfbsfb]

Ive been trying to prebook our seats going to Miami to no avail. Phoned VA and was informed that I cannot select seats just now.