V-Flyer

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.