Hurricane Dorian

We were booked to fly to MCO on Tuesday in two upper reward seats. Having seen that MCO was to close at 02.00 on Monday due to hurricane Dorian I contacted Virgin on Saturday morning. They were absolutely great. Reward seats are of course not always easy to come by. Before calling I checked but could not find seats available for at least 2 to 3 weeks after our booking. During the call they identified seats and booked two Upper returns with no fuss whatever just 7 days after the original booking. They even allowed a change of the return flight so we could msaintain the originally planned length of stay! No charges for the changes! Such a relief as my other half is a nervous flyer at the best of times and the thought of travelling when a hurrican was around was not helping.
Virgin certainly displayed great customer service at a worrying time.

I had a similar situation a couple of years ago. I was in Florida in the run-up to Irma and wanted to get home early to avoid it. I was on a G fare (Upper Class reward) - needless to say there were no G fares available to fly home earlier, but there were revenue seats available in Upper Class.

One call to Swansea (once I got through!) and a revenue fare was switched to a G fare and I flew home two days earlier than planned. Thinking about it, I probably had a bit more leverage as I was already in Florida, so Virgin had to get me home somehow.

The rule of thumb is that if you have a reward ticket and want to change it then yes there does need to be reward availability on your new flight.

But if the airline has to make a change (because of weather or an issue under their control) then there doesn’t have to be reward availability on the new flights.