Can't make a booking enquiry with Children

Apologies if this has already been covered. I read back to October and didn't see any mentions about it.

Basically trying to make a family booking and I am told:

Passengers under 16 years old can't be booked online currently.
Chat now to our Customer Service Centre to make your booking.

Never seen anything so bonkers in all my life. This could cost them a lot of money in the long run, I suspect.

I wonder if this is related to calculating the APD discount correctly for under 16s.

Edit: On second thoughts, you aren't trying to book an under 16 to South Africa alone are you?

No, a family of 2 adults and 3 children and kids are 5, 8 & 9 years old. Crazy!!

That's even stranger. The APD exemption for under 12s has been around for about 18 months so perhaps it's not that at all.

Vs say they are sorry about this, but for the moment they can only be booked over the phone and they are working on this...

Edit. Just seen this on Virgin Twitter. Probably down to the new website!!

I spent 40 minutes on hold only to be told I can't book miles plus money over the phone and have to do it on the website. Ludicrous as the website doesn't work booking children. Ah well, I was only booking 4 adults and 3 children in total, all upper class so it's not like it was a significant amount of money!!

Ironically I can book using sky scanner and it gives me a price with the children included.

Any thoughts on why I shouldn't book this way? It will save me burning miles.

It's offering me business z class fare in 1-1-1 config on A330-300 to Dubai next October.

I wonder how many customers VS has lost due to the inept website ?

Parts like mile booster still has sorry we are working on this

Good grief, I take a few months break from flying Virgin and when I come back, it's all fallen apart. Needless to say, this was the first forum I came to when I got the same ludicrous error message when trying to price some flights for my family.

The next thing I did was just try a search for 4 adults to give me an indicative price... Cue endless timeouts and error messages. So no further forward tonight.

If I'd released this website in my former job, I'd have been fired. Utterly shocking