V-Flyer

Sorry to be bugging you all with questions!

Is there likely to be a price rise on the LGW-MCO after the UCS have been fitted?

I ask this because at the moment for the same dates I want to go next year, this years prices for UC is a very reasonable £2021.00 for 1 adult and 1 child!

Will the prices rise because of the UCS? I am planning on booking my flights in Feb next year as soon as they come availble for my dates. I assume this is the way to get the best fare.

TIA

Claire

Good question, which I dont know the answer to, perhaps an insider could let us know!

You can almost be certain that there will not be as many Z class fares though, given the fewer seats planned for the LGW UCS conversions.

Its difficult to say, as if you go to the Virgin Holidays site, all flight prices are rising next year anyway.

quote:Originally posted by Richard28

You can almost be certain that there will not be as many Z class fares though, given the fewer seats planned for the LGW UCS conversions.

Depends on the route as MCO has only ever had 16 UC in Zone A
Zone B was a PE overflow

Carribean routes on the other hand has the full 28 UC seats for UC so I guess there might be less Z availability there..

I wonder if the LHR routes suffered a higher than average price hike after the first UCS were fitted? Does anyone know?

I always book direct with VA rather than VH as I don't do packages to Florida.

It will be interesting to see come February - exactly how much the price rise will be.

Probably totally irrelevant, but my parents flew Concorde to Barbados 6 years in a row and there were just saying the other day that the tickets never went up more than a few tens of pounds. Similarly BA FC return leg from Barbados barely rose in those five years either.

In 'theory' fares should be going down due to increased competition.

Overall the cost of flying Upper or Business class with any airline is now the cheapest it has ever been due to premium cabins increased popularity.

I know that on the LHR-JFK route VS's UCS and BA's CW are exactly the same price when booked direct - well at least they were until BA decided to add £6 each way, I have not checked in the last few days. When I booked my Z fare UCS to JFK for September another online agent was fractionally cheaper then booking with VS directly (about £3 I think), all the same I still booked direct with VS

Regards

quote:Originally posted by feistyblue


Probably totally irrelevant, but my parents flew Concorde to Barbados 6 years in a row and there were just saying the other day that the tickets never went up more than a few tens of pounds. Similarly BA FC return leg from Barbados barely rose in those five years either.

F fares were so expensive compared to J,Y that they only needed to rise by inflation

UC being a J fare is much cheaper and has more competition so in theory fares should fall

W fares are relitavely new for most airlines BA only introduced WT+ in 2001 VS in may 1992
Many companies now use W fares for travel instead of J

So I guess ultimately It depends on if corporates continue to use W or pay more for J..which they might given DVT fears..

Listed fares (rather than promotional offers) are governed by IATA, not by the airlines themselves (although nearly all airlines are members). That's why all full J fares are pretty much identical on each route.

What Virgin have done with the introduction of UCS is reduce the Z fare (deeply discounted advance purchase) inventory available on UCS flights, making it more difficult to get the cheaper fares, effectively placing a premium on the product. However, as more airlines fit flat beds of one sort or another, there will be less product differentiation and hopefully we'll see a few more Z fares.

BC

quote:Originally posted by BlackCat

What Virgin have done with the introduction of UCS is reduce the Z fare (deeply discounted advance purchase) inventory available on UCS flights.

BC

Are they reduced accross all sectors equally, or some more than others.
Does anyone know how many less Z's are available now?

This has been a really interesting discussion.

I have no idea how many less Z fares are available on UCS flights, but I just had a play with tickets numbers for LGW-MCO-LGW on the VA site and it will let me "book" 7 seats at Z fare but at 8 seats it jumps up to the next class.

So does that add weight to my theory of wanting to book at the exact 11 month mark to get a Z fare next year? £4500 per ticket is just a bit too much for me otherwise if I want to pay for our hotel rooms for 3 weeks as well!

Feistyblue,

When checking online availability with any airline, the maximum number of seats available will always be 7 - even if there is 27, 37 or 47 available.

Of course if the seat availability is less than 7 on that particular flight, the actual number will be shown.

I believe this is to prevent the general public from getting an accurate indication of the flight load prior to booking.

On numerous occasions I have asked consolidators what the available was on a particular flight, thinking that the fewer people booked, the cheaper the fare would be. But was always told - "the flight is showing 7 empty seats in that particular class".

I also think it prevents competitors from gaing access to competing airlines pay-loads prior to departure.

Shoreside,
Its true that when checking availability 7 will be the max on an GDS Booking System tool like galileo.

However if you try to book 8 seats on the Virgin Atlantic website and the price goes up to the next fare class does that mean only 7 Z UC seats are available? Availibility is one thing but we're talking actual sales here!