Seat selection when not booking directly

Hello everyone.

I am looking at booking next years hols, and have found the exact same virgin flights via sky scanner, around half the price of the virgin ones.
I remember in the past that unless you booked directly with virgin, you could not get access to the seat map or anything like that.

Is that still the case?

I'm looking at booking a fairly big group, so I want to make sure we are all together.

Regardless of who you book through you can still access seat selection, you just use Virgin booking reference that Expedia, Opodo....etc give you.

[mitchja]

The only thing to be a bit mindful of is if the third party site uses your middle name. VS don't use middle names in PNR's and so what sometimes happens is the middle name initial gets tagged to the end of your first name when trying to look up a booking references with VS.

When I first booked with Expedia, I'd got my middle name (which is William) in my Expedia profile and any flight bookings included that and as VS don't do middle names I had to enter my name as follows on the VS website:

First Name: JamesW
Last Name: Mitchell

I remember in the past that unless you booked directly with virgin, you could not get access to the seat map or anything like that.

If booking with Virgin Holidays or Travel City Direct you can access the seat map at 11 months (as you can book up to 18 months out with these companies) but you need to phone them up and ask for the flight booking ref. If booking with other companies, in particular small travel agent chains (I don't wish to name them) they do a block booking with Virgin in advance but the flights are not confirmed until 3 months before when you pay your balance so you can't do the seat booking until then.