Tokyo flight cancelled - what's up?

Apologies for being miserable in my first post!

Big trip to Japan (LHR to Narita) booked with the family over half term (1st time the kids have flown VS UC) and yesterday I get two 'automatically generated' texts telling me that our outbound flight VS900 on 20th October has been cancelled so they have rebooked us on another flight on a different day....

This is more than a pain given that we have parking, hotels and a Tokyo tour booked all of which will have to be changed.

Checking on the website it appears the flight has completely gone (not just our seats...).

We booked the seats using miles so I doubt I have any chance of being compensated and don't want to miss the trip all together (we are going for my 40th birthday) so will have to work with the new dates but a vague apology or explanation when I phoned up would have been nice or even some personal (as opposed to auto generated) notification to discuss our options.

I've flown with Virgin lots of times before and never had any problems but is this unusual that a scheduled flight with passengers booked on it just completely disappears a few weeks before ti is scheduled?

Is our return flight on the 31st October also at risk?

Thanks for any advice.

Matt

[Neil]

Hi and welcome.

Unfortunately things like this do happen, for a variety of reasons. I would guess that maybe the loads are light and they have decided to merge some flights together, which is frustrating for you, but maybe a necessity for VS.

It might be worth posting a quick question on the VS Facebook wall. The guys over there are very good at replying and finding information out for people, and they might be able to give you a more specific reason for the cancellation.

Sorry not to be of more help
Neil

Thanks for flagging this up - we've got two reward flights in G to Tokyo booked next April.

A check through the VS schedules shows one, and occasionally two flights a week have been dropped nearly every week up to next March. Random days of the week as well - so if the pattern continues it's hard to predict what day will be affected each week.

As Neil says, it must be due to loads not picking up after the earthquake. Keeping my fingers crossed that our flights in April won't be affected - like you we've got a full schedule booked in Japan which will be thrown out by a change of dates.

We booked the seats using miles so I doubt I have any chance of being compensated and don't want to miss the trip all together (we are going for my 40th birthday) so will have to work with the new dates but a vague apology or explanation when I phoned up would have been nice or even some personal (as opposed to auto generated) notification to discuss our options.

Hi and welcome.

Unfortunatly for you as VS have given you more than two weeks notice of the change you are not entitled to any compensation - that applies to a fully ££ booking too.

Though if you now chose to cancell you would get a full refund of your miles and the taxes,fees and surcharges as the change was due to a VS decision and not yours.