V-Flyer

I have a V Holiday to Dubai. Currently in H class. Has anyone or does anyone know if it is possible to pay extra to change the ticket class to S. The S class tickets are fairly cheap and I have 40,000 air miles to upgrade myself and partner to Upper Class.

Virgin Holidays seemed to be a little clueless and VA said it is a matter for VH and its been a few days with no response.

Any ideas?

Hi and welcome,

The only way to do this would be to get VH to get a price from VS to change your H to a full S fare and also to check at the same time if there are miles seats available to upgrade too (no point changing the fare if no miles seats available).

All this has to be done through VH as that is who you have booked through.

Thanks,
Neil

Cheers Neil,

They seem to be a little confused about it at my local VH branch. No doubt the extra price will be fairly steep!

Yes, unfortunately even the call centre really aren't the best at trying to understand these sort of things either, so even giving them a call might only result in even more frustration.

Have you actually checked to see if there are some UC miles seats available on your flight? (remember miles and revenue seats are different) You can do this by doing a dummy miles booking on the VS website, as if there isn't I guess there is no point trying to get the price to change your current fare.

you might also consider buying up to an L fare which will be a lot less. You will then need more miles to upgrade but buying them may work out cheaper.

JCBR wrote:you might also consider buying up to an L fare which will be a lot less. You will then need more miles to upgrade but buying them may work out cheaper.

The OP already has a VH 'H' class ticket, which is the PE fare code that VH books in to, so it wouldn't make any sense to change to an L.

Neil wrote:

JCBR wrote:you might also consider buying up to an L fare which will be a lot less. You will then need more miles to upgrade but buying them may work out cheaper.

The OP already has a VH 'H' class ticket, which is the PE fare code that VH books in to, so it wouldn't make any sense to change to an L.

Oh, I dunno. Seems like an interesting way of doing it. 'downgrading' to Economy, but 'upgrading' to an upgradable fare. Chances are that, if it can be done, it will be a lot cheaper than upgrading to S, and the mileage difference between a Economy - Upper and PE - Upper isn't that huge in the scheme of things. If the OP has the miles balance to do it, it would certainly be worth investigation.

Pete wrote:

Neil wrote:

JCBR wrote:you might also consider buying up to an L fare which will be a lot less. You will then need more miles to upgrade but buying them may work out cheaper.

The OP already has a VH 'H' class ticket, which is the PE fare code that VH books in to, so it wouldn't make any sense to change to an L.

Oh, I dunno. Seems like an interesting way of doing it. 'downgrading' to Economy, but 'upgrading' to an upgradable fare. Chances are that, if it can be done, it will be a lot cheaper than upgrading to S, and the mileage difference between a Economy - Upper and PE - Upper isn't that huge in the scheme of things. If the OP has the miles balance to do it, it would certainly be worth investigation.

I'm not sure that a) it would be something they could or maybe are allowed to do, and b) that would make financial sense, Surely paying a bit more to upgrade to an S and using 20k miles, is better than paying the same for an L and using the extra miles. The difference between a H and S shouldn't be that huge.

Difference between an H and S can be in the order of over £750 on an SFO ticket, Neil, plus any admin fee. So I'd say IF you can go to an L (depending on how much miles are "worth" to you) it's worth looking at, assuming you have the spare miles...