#859231 by Smid
10 Oct 2013, 18:14
So after a horrible VS flight to LAX last year where a member of the onboard staff managed to make my other half cry because she poured me a drink at the bar and took it to me, and a return flight from SFO where a member of staff poured one finger's worth of wine at a time to me all during the flight, I dumped my VS black credit card and got the BA one (never did a trip report because I was so angry that I'd rather not dwell on it), having considered never flying Virgin again...

The miles spare, I did book to Vancouver this year and the flight was excellent there and back again, so I guess back to VS (with a careful eye).

It was not hard to get 50k miles with BA with the card that after the offers, I've got about 7K on SPG and 15K on amex miles, so I could russle up about 65K for something...

So whats the likelyhood if I book a PE flight at a sale fare, that there might be some club seats on the go for upgrade closer to the time?

I've not done BA before, and understand the lounge aint great (and could kill me :), but got charmed by the 1K Kingston fares which I might take up on the future, so might want to try, perhaps to Vegas over christmas or new year?

I had a look at the faq on the other site and it baffled me. I tried out the rewards stuff and it gave me pounds + points estimation of cost, but had no reference points as to whether it was a bargain or not. Virgins reward seats have been horrible for the last year, except for NY and Vancouver (but that worked out excellent as a destination). Just wondering how BA's compares.
#859232 by joeyc
10 Oct 2013, 18:47
Have I got this wrong or were the CC simply regulating your alcohol consumption? Happens to me on occasion - the lesson in that instance is less and often :P

Likelihood of the upgrade is similar to VS - BA release their reward buckets at random. Always give it a pop at check-in and if there are CW seats available they will send you along to the upgrade/ticketing desk.

Guessing by the other site you are referring to our wonderful and extremely intelligent colleagues over on BA Flyer :P - What is baffling you? The site is still developing so if you have feedback on site usability/information lacking then do let those fine people know. There are a fair few things in the works so please go ahead and post a suggestion or two.

In terms of whether or not it is a bargain, only you can judge that one.. if you see a price that you are willing/happy to pay then go for it.

Happy trails 8D
#859237 by at240
10 Oct 2013, 19:27
The honest answer is that it's hard to say -- availability has tightened up horribly of late. They are both basically leisure destinations primarily, which probably doesn't help, I suspect. I'd rather be in PE than WT+ myself, but obviously getting the magic miles upgrades to UC is tough on those routes and the upgradeable VS fare can be pricey.
#859259 by Vegascrazy
11 Oct 2013, 08:14
Other key BA differentiator for me is the companion voucher as it's usable on BA and saves £K's but VS's version of the voucher is pretty much unusable/worthless. So easy to redeem too online within main BA booking engine.
#859282 by Smid
11 Oct 2013, 15:10
joeyc wrote:Have I got this wrong or were the CC simply regulating your alcohol consumption? Happens to me on occasion - the lesson in that instance is less and often :P


Actually the details are this. My girlfriend was at the bar talking to someone, and the service was a tad slow (I think it was about an hour and a half after liftoff, nobody serving at the bar either, they're always slow in LHR flights), so she came up and asked me if I wanted a drink. She brought me back a glass of champers and about five minutes later came back crying. A member of staff had said she was drinking from the bottle at the bar and she'd been refused anymore alcohol. She had no more on that flight, and certainly wasn't drunk. The FM had not seen the event, it was someone else, and according to my o/h they were clearly lying, having exagerated the fact that she'd served herself a drink due to staff being too busy (which is against rules).

We typically swap seats, and did on that one. On the way back I sat in my named seat, and it was as if I had been marked as a problem drinker (if they'd bothered marking that, they might have identified the sex of the person in the seat too), and I was treated as such. My girlfriend didn't have anything more than the initial glass of champagne, and was strangely enough incredibly annoyed about virgin at that point.

I actually asked the staff for every single drink I wanted, to make sure I couldn't be accused of serving myself. It was the one person who seemed to be serving tiny amounts, so it could have been that person was just mean... But he was consistent.

I was certainly concerned about whether either of us would be marked as troublemakers on future virgin flights, and it wasn't that way to Vancouver or back.

Vancouver was the first time I've had what I'd term an excellent UC flight from LHR. I've only done JFK a few times, but that the rest seem to be far below the quality of the LGW because far too few staff and them being overworked and irritable. On one JFK flight my other half got served starter, and then didn't get served the main meal at all, got skipped over and had to go and ask for it when she worked out this was the case an hour later...

Guessing by the other site you are referring to our wonderful and extremely intelligent colleagues over on BA Flyer :P - What is baffling you? The site is still developing so if you have feedback on site usability/information lacking then do let those fine people know. There are a fair few things in the works so please go ahead and post a suggestion or two.


Actually, no. I looked at ba-flyer before and its kind of quiet, but I would post there. Flyertalk was the one with the faq and they're a tad unforgiving of newbie questions...
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