Virgin Newbie (Virgin?) Questions

Have been looking at this forum for a few weeks now and have noticed some very knowledgeable and tolerant people sharing their wisdom and would be obliged if anybody could provide answers/guidance on the following three questions.

We have recently returned to the UK after working in the UAE for a number of years and have now booked two trips to the US with Virgin with more to follow.

1/ Frequant flyer: It will mainly be Mrs Elwood and I travelling for pleasure but I will make the occassional trip alone. Can we share frequent flyer points i.e. can I join and also get some credit for my wifes flights. I couldn't see an answer to this on the Virgin website. Emirates Skywards scheme credits 20% for family members journeys.

2/ LAX Connections: We will be travelling to LAX later in the year while our ultimate destination will be San Diego and need to book onward flight. Am trying to save $250 by not booking fully flexible ticket and need to try to work out what time to book onward flight for. VS007 scheduled arrival is 15.10. Can anybody give any guidance on how long it generally takes to clear immigration and customs in LAX, and check in for onward flight. (Haven't been to LA since the '80s or to the US at all since 9/11 and the more diligent immigration checks which I understand have followed)

3/ Twilight check in: Have seen this alluded to here but again could not find any reference on Virgin website. Can anybody provide any more info on this and specifically will we be able to check in for VS007 the night before and if so what is the latest we can do so?

Many thanks for any help!

[Bazz]

Hi Elwood and welcome,

To answer your questions, Virgin do offer family membership where you can get credit on your account for other named members of your family but this is only available to Gold members so you need to accrue 40 tier points to make yourself eligible. You can however "pool" your miles, to a certain extent, providing you are both FC members when it comes to booking a reward flight you can split the miles required on the basis of 25% - 75% so if you needed say 80,000 and you had 65,000 and Mrs Elwood had 26,000 you could provide 60K and your good lady the remaining 20K. You will find this discussed elsewhere on the board in a couple of threads if you do a search.

Immigration at LAX can be very bad, long lines and a slow process, we fly that route at least once a year. IMO you should allow a absolute minimum of four hours from the time VS7 is scheduled to land to the departure time of your onward flight, even this might be a bit tight if your onward Term is aways from T2. I don't know what the official MCT is for INT to DOM connections. Others may have different views. Also the westbound flights are more likely to arrive late.

I'm not sure if this facility is available at LHR? I thought it was just at LGW and only on some Virgin Holidays flights, not on scheduled services, I'm sure others will correct me.

I know this is s bit sketchy but hope it helps.

[Pete]

Welcome to the forums Elwood. Glad to have you aboard.

Virgin do have a shared card, but only once you get to Gold level. Once you get gold, you can nominate another card holder (at the same address as yours) and they get Silver automatically as a minimum. They get full mileage for their flights, and the main cardholder can spend from both accounts.

Bazz might also be able to add some experience about sharing miles between two non-linked accounts. It's a little more complicated, and I think it would require Mrs Elwood was on the flight too...

For LAX, in my experience, I've always left a minimum of 3 hours between connections when I've done the LHR-LAX-LAS route. That was more to do with the schedules than necessity, but then I do like to give myself plenty of slippage time. Security can either be a nightmare or a dream - but you can never predict it, so play safe!

I think Twilight Check In is only available at Gatwick, so wouldn't apply to the VS007 - but I'll hand over to Richard for the definitive answer on that. Since I only live about 30 minutes from Heathrow, never needed to explore that feature to deeply.

Pix

[RichardMannion]

Hi,

Yes correct boys - Twilight Check-in is only available on LGW flights as they are the bucket-and-spade routes.

Its available for all passengers, not just htose that booked via Virgin Holidays.

http://www.virginholidays.co.uk/home/la ... ilight.htm

There are similar services but on the morning of the deaprture for the Eastbound flights (back to LGW):-

Orlando - Downtown Disney Checkin:
http://www.virginholidays.co.uk/florida ... ckin.shtml
Free for Virgin Holidays custoemrs, $5/person for all others excluding infants, Upper Passengers, and anyone travellign with a FC Gold Card Holder.

Certain Caribbean Hotels booked via Virgin Holidays:
http://www.virginholidays.co.uk/caribbe ... ckin.shtml

Thanks,
Richard