Is something happening to the lowest fares?

First of all - great website, only discovered after the article on I-Fly, but so glad I did discover it!

Now down to business... I had an itinery on hold with AMEX for travel from LHR to LAX and return in April in VA Upper Class. I used this service last time and it worked out slightly cheaper than the VA fare on the website.

I have just spoken to AMEX to make some slight changes to requirements and I was informed that the trip would need to be confirmed by 5:30 today since VA had advised AMEX to withdraw the "lowest" available fares from that time. Apparently VA only contacted AMEX on Monday to advise them that they would need to stop selling those fares from today and AMEX are frantically trying to contact people with reserved bookings to advise them that it needs to have gone through ticketing today.

Any ideas as to what might be happening here? I'm a bit worried that the really good lowest UC fares might be a thing of the past and VA may withdraw those prices from their website next....

Thanks
Shaz

[mitchja]

Hi Shaz

You may have already come across this on here but if not try this post:

http://www.virginflyer.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=347

Looks like VS are stopping selling Z UC and K PE fairs - these are both deeply discounted fairs. Next UC fair up is a D fair I think - basically no difference in the service you get but with the D fair you do get the freebies likes the current UC goodies give away promo but of course D fairs are more expensive. Not sure if there are any restriction differences between Z and D fairs though.

Regards
James

Look like VS thinks it can fill UC with the higher fares.

[Nottingham Nick]

I suppose that it is good news for the airline in the long term that they are confident of filling the UC seats. I just hope they are not all being filled by cut-price upgrades sold through Virgin Holidays!

I also hope they release some more UC / PE seats in the Summer for rewards pax as well!!

Nick