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#912662 by AlphaEcho
06 Nov 2015, 12:01
Back in August I decided to blow some miles and have a few days in New York in November booking award flights in Upper Class both ways. A quick check online and I picked the VS1 out and the VS46 back as the timings for me were good.

Like others on here I discovered a couple of months ago that Virgin had changed the flight time of the VS1 by over 3 hours to late afternoon. For the past 7 weeks I have been checking multiple times daily for any Upper Class award availability on either the VS3, VS111 or the VS45 all of which would get me into New York earlier than the new timing of the VS1. (Even created a spreadsheet to see if there was any pattern to seats being released – OK I got a bit obsessed with this.)

It’s now just under a week till I go and not a single Upper Class Award flight to New York has been available (apart from on the VS1 – no surprise there I guess).

This morning I got up and checked the VS website, Economy and Premium Economy were available according to the calendar, so no change there then I thought. I was about to leave and start my multiple checks throughout the day as I had done for the previous 7 weeks after I had had some breakfast, but for some reason I just clicked on the date and low and behold that page was showing Upper Class availability on the VS111 to JFK.

Not quite knowing what page of the Virgin website to believe I made a quick call to the Flying Club which was answered within a minute and yes there was availability on the VS111. Then we hit a problem and the agent couldn’t cancel the outbound leg for me – the VS1 to EWR, a brief moment of despair before the Flying Club agent said she need to put me on hold whilst she got through to another department to get it sorted.

A few minutes on hold and she’s back saying she can’t get hold of the relevant department but not to worry she has put the seat on hold and will call me back to save me hanging on.

Five minutes later and true to her word she calls me back to confirm that the changes have been made and I’m now on the VS111 in UC, payment was made for the change she said it was £25, I thought it was £30 but we will see when it appears on my credit card.

Without having to ask she asked if I had a seating preference and I said anything with a window would be great and I got the final window seat – 3A on the A330. (I didn’t want to tell her I had already checked the seat map on ExpertFlyer whilst we were talking and it was saying the same thing in case it was wrong.)

She said that it may take a couple of days before I get any confirmation as it needed to be processed but within 10 minutes I received an e-mail and I just checked online and the new flights are showing up on my account.

Moral of this story is never give up and don’t believe everything you see on the Virgin website as the Virgin Hamsters are still playing tricks. My Flying Club agent was absolutely fantastic – well done Virgin and especially Marie. I’ll raise a glass in the Clubhouse to you.

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