VS158 18th September

Currently sat in the Delta One Lounge at Boston with a 6+ hour delay on VS158.

Communications from Virgin has been nothing short of terrible.

Letter given at check in and only when prying told that a part was coming on the VS11 and it would take them till 02:50am to get us in the air.

Zero updates since and the VS158 A/C is seemingly parked up in the dark since VS11 arrived with no frantic maintenance action.

Very disappointed

[mitchja]

Sorry to hear this. Good luck getting home. I take it VS wouldn’t move you to the VS12?

Thanks

Nope they said Upper & Premium was full.

Along with the Delta/BA flights departing as well.

VS158 tomorrow is also full as a few people jumped ship in front of us in the queue.

[mitchja]

Sorry forgot to ask, did DL keep the lounge open for you?

Sorry forgot to ask, did DL keep the lounge open for you?

Only until the normal closing time of 1AM, we were then out into the “wild” of a very cold Boston airport!

Finally boarded around 2AM

[mitchja]

Hopefully you are home now…do make sure you keep all receipts and claim everything back from VS as part of their duty of care during delays as well as the UK261 delay compensation which is still applicable even if VS throw Virgin points at you as a way of an apology.

At it sounded like a mechanical fault, VS won’t be able to dodge this one.

When I diverted to LHR on my ATL>MAN flight home back in JAN because of weather (MAN runways were closed due to snow clearing); even though VS wouldn’t pay UK261 compensation for that, they still payed for the lunch stop we had coming back up from LHR on a coach after I submitted receipts. They would have also covered any extended airport car park charges too.

Hopefully you are home now…do make sure you keep all receipts and claim everything back from VS as part of their duty of care during delays as well as the UK261 delay compensation which is still applicable even if VS throw Virgin points at you as a way of an apology.

At it sounded like a mechanical fault, VS won’t be able to dodge this one.

When I diverted to LHR on my ATL>MAN flight home back in JAN because of weather (MAN runways were closed due to snow clearing); even though VS wouldn’t pay UK261 compensation for that, they still payed for the lunch stop we had coming back up from LHR on a coach after I submitted receipts. They would have also covered any extended airport car park charges too.

I’ve just filled in the UK261 form and noticed a tick box stating “ Before you submit your claim, please confirm you are aware that compensation will only be paid for full fare paying passengers”


Do you happen to know how this works with Mileage redemptions? A quick search suggestions mileages redemptions class as a full fare ticket under UK/EU 261 but some airlines like to disagree.

Thanks for the tip on expenses, it cost considerably more in train fares given we hit peak but not sure if that’s a reasonable expense or not.

Hopefully you are home now…do make sure you keep all receipts and claim everything back from VS as part of their duty of care during delays as well as the UK261 delay compensation which is still applicable even if VS throw Virgin points at you as a way of an apology.

At it sounded like a mechanical fault, VS won’t be able to dodge this one.

When I diverted to LHR on my ATL>MAN flight home back in JAN because of weather (MAN runways were closed due to snow clearing); even though VS wouldn’t pay UK261 compensation for that, they still payed for the lunch stop we had coming back up from LHR on a coach after I submitted receipts. They would have also covered any extended airport car park charges too.

I’ve just filled in the UK261 form and noticed a tick box stating “ Before you submit your claim, please confirm you are aware that compensation will only be paid for full fare paying passengers”


Do you happen to know how this works with Mileage redemptions? A quick search suggestions mileages redemptions class as a full fare ticket under UK/EU 261 but some airlines like to disagree.

Thanks for the tip on expenses, it cost considerably more in train fares given we hit peak but not sure if that’s a reasonable expense or not.

No issue with being mileage redemption ticket. I got the compensation when my flight was cancelled within 24 hours and had to take an early flight + connecting instead of direct. In the end, I landed at the same time i would have done on the direct, but departed over 5 hours earlier. Got £520 per person. That was on a reward booking.
I think what they are referencing is to either staff discounted tickets or free tickets which have been issued for previous downgrades etc.

UK261 (formerly EU261) is definitely payable on mileage redemption tickets - been there, done that (smoke on flight deck & return to MAN, arrived in MCO 5mins too early to trigger the £520 payout). It's not payable on staff travel though - didn't dare risk trying that one.

Unsure how it works on one of those reward tickets for any flight on the route network (the ones they hand out when they need to offload pax due to overbooking). I guess it will all fall down to what fare code they book the subsequent ticket into.

Thanks all, email through this afternoon agreeing to the claim and payment! Great turnaround