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#962580 by CommanderB
13 Oct 2023, 16:03
V-flyer is an incredible little community, there’s tons of knowledge and we’re fortunate to still be growing as the internet’s home of all things Virgin Atlantic.

I’ve been meaning to write this guide for a while and its purpose is to help readers increase their chances of successfully upgrading their Virgin Atlantic flight. Not everyone can buy Upper Class tickets from the get-go, so if you’re a regular Economy or Premium flyer, this is for you. I’ve used this information to have a ridiculously high hit rate of upgrades on Virgin.

Over the years travelling VS I’ve flown extensively in all cabins. Nowadays it’s mostly Premium and Upper but there was a time when Economy was all I could manage. As such, I’ve built up a pretty good arsenal of information about upgrading tickets with VS. In fact, this year I’ve done 7 Premium returns to the US and every single one I’ve upgraded to Upper in some fashion.

Reward availability

VS reward availability for Premium and Upper is dynamic once the guaranteed availability has been depleted. VS can (and do) add/remove availability on an hour by hour basis. For example using my LAX flight today..

  • 7+ days before departure, Economy reward availability. No Premium or Upper.
  • 3 days before departure, Premium availability appears. (Tell-tale sign that Premium cabin will not be full for this flight).
  • 1 day before – online check-in opens exactly 24hr prior to departure time, still no Upper Class.
  • 6 hours after online check in opens, 1 Upper Class reward seat appears. It’s snapped up within an hour.
  • About 12 hours prior to boarding time (morning of the flight), 2 more Upper Class reward seats have appeared.

This can all be checked on the VS site using the standard search tools or the reward seat checker. If you know which day you’re flying, the normal search is the most reliable.

Once you find a seat, you can call the ticketing line to do the upgrade. Do not wait. The seats can (and do) get snapped up in minutes. You never know how many other people are looking.

Having the right ticket

To upgrade any Virgin ticket, it has to be ticketed correctly in the first place. That means upgrades must be allowed by the fare rules of the ticket. All Premium fare buckets (K, H, S and W) are upgradable. Previously K wasn’t upgradable but this changed sometime in 2021. Good news for Premium travellers.

Economy tickets are upgradable, also depending on fare bucket. Fare buckets Y, B, R, L, U, M, E, Q, X, N, O and V can be upgraded using points. T fare buckets cannot be upgraded.

Your fare bucket is visible on your e-ticket. See the example image below where my ticket was Premium (S). If you need a specific fare bucket, ensure you ask for this when booking.

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Here is some useful information that was correct at the time of writing:

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If you need to price a specific fare bucket and don’t want to call VS, you can use the ITA matrix. Checkout this post for more information.

My advice is, if you know you want to upgrade the flight, never book 2 cabins below the cabin you want. So if you want to fly Upper using points or a cash upgrade offer on the day of travel, buy a Premium ticket. Likewise, if you want to upgrade to Premium, buy the best Economy ticket that allows upgrades. You CAN upgrade from Economy to Upper but the price is usually a bit extortionate, so I’d recommend only trying to hop up by one cabin.

The Virgin Atlantic app

The VS app shows upgrade offers for your flight in a couple of different ways. Before online check in opens, you’ll often see an “upgrade your flight” option. Usually, it’s a few thousand pounds. THIS ISN’T REALLY AN UPGRADE OFFER. Even though they use the word offer. What’s actually happening is they’re showing you the price to re-ticket your itinerary one way, to the next cabin up.

The real offers usually come on or around online check in opening or in the days preceding if the flight is very quiet. You can see if VS are offering fixed price one way upgrades by looking at the seat map. In the top left corner, below the flight number, if there’s a price there, that’s the price for the cabin you’re looking at. In the example image below, they want £949 to go from Premium to Upper on the VS23. Not entirely unreasonable, but I’ve had £649 offers for LAX and nearly a grand is a little steep. This information is telling though… If VS is willing to offer the fixed cash price, that usually means there’s a reward seat available too. VS are very good at offering both cash and points upgrades at the airport.

Edit to add more information on in-app upgrade offers March 2024 -

VS refer to these offers internally as “up sell’s”. There’s three levels to them. Level one, the ticket reprice as discussed above. Level two, an offer for passengers with revenue fares booked direct with VS (usually within 7-14 days of departure, depending on load factors), level 3, same as level 2 except more last minute and open to people who were booked by a travel agent or have a VS reward booking. Note these offers won’t constitute extra tier points, as discussed elsewhere in this thread.

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Added 22nd Nov 2023:
Promotional upgrades offered by the app no longer entitle you to tier points or virgin points for the upgraded fare, only the original underlying cash fare.

At the airport

For LHR, the clubhouse is the best place to do upgrades. If there isn’t a reward seat available, but the flight is quiet, the clubhouse staff do have the power to upgrade you using points if there is a fixed price cash upgrade available (this is because there are physical seats available so they may as well let you.)

If you don’t have Clubhouse access, ask about upgrades at check in. It can be done at the gate, but at LHR that’s quite impractical and gate upgrades are usually only something I entertain at outstations.

Added 22nd Nov 2023:
Promotional upgrades offered at the airport, within 24 hours of departure, no longer entitle you to tier points or virgin points for the upgraded fare, only the original underlying cash fare.

Points upgrades

Points upgrades can be done by airport staff, but it requires them calling Global Ticketing Services (the VS call centre) and some don’t like doing it. I’ve heard every excuse in the book… “we can’t do that”, “there’s no seats”, “the flight is full”, “airport staff don’t have access to reward upgrades” etc etc. If this ever happens, push back and ask for a supervisor. It can be done, but certainly when things are busy (outstations this happens) they can sometimes try and fob you off. I’ve never had this at LHR, but at smaller outstations it can be a thing. A good way to combat this situation is to say “I know this is a bit of a hassle, that’s why I’m trying to do this before boarding. You’ll need to call GTS to have them take the points from the account. You can take the credit card payment and reissue the boarding pass”. Once they know that you know the process, the whole thing is defused. It’s not uncommon to find staff that don’t really know how it works and you have to… educate them.

The tables outlining the amount of points needed for upgrades is here on the VS site.

Added 22nd Nov 2023:
Points upgrades offered at the airport, within 24 hours of departure, no longer entitle you to tier points or virgin points for the upgraded fare, only the original underlying cash fare. (In practice this was always the case, but there were issues where you did sometimes get the incorrect points awarded).

Voucher upgrades

You can use your vouchers like the Credit Card voucher or 2000 tier point upgrade voucher (they work exactly the same way) at the airport too, just like a points upgrade. But the staff must call GTS and it can be a bit of a faff.

Operational upgrades

OpUp’s are what happens when VS overbook a cabin (like Premium) and have to move people to Upper free of charge. They are entirely unpredictable. However, there are some things that will increase your (incredibly slim) chances. VS tends to move single travellers, with status, on expensive fares. They almost never separate families or couples. So, if you’re travelling alone… you may be the one!

If you find out from the staff that your cabin is overbooked. Offer to move. Either take a downgrade for some compensation or offer points to upgrade and guarantee the move for yourself. I was once in a situation at LAX where Premium was overbooked. I offered the gate manager for me to downgrade or upgrade using a voucher. As I was helpful, she ended up sticking me in upper and didn’t even take the voucher from me because it was too much of a hassle for her. Someone had to move anyway, I just optimised my chances of it being me. It always pays to be friendly and helpful with the staff. There’s no guarantee of OpUp’s, it’s a lottery and you can only play when overbooking happens.

Calling the ticketing line

Points upgrades can be done at any time, 24 hours a day as long as there is a reward seat available. They can be done after online check in opens too. One thing I am not sure of is if the ticketing line have access to the same cash offer that’s available in the app. That’s something for me to check. (Edit to add, they do).

Flight loading

Want to know how busy a flight is? Ask the staff is the easy way.

The seat map is not a reliable indicator as to how full a cabin is, but if there are tons of seats it is an indicator of a quiet flight. Most passengers for Premium and Upper to select seats ahead of arriving at the airport.

You can gain some information on flight load from the VS website too. If VS is willing to sell more than 1 or 2 tickets for your cabin on the day of the flight, there’s a good chance there’s free seats and those may be available for points or cash upgrade. I find that on JFK flights they will overbook certain flights a lot because they have 4-5 flights, they can juggle people around on. For holiday routes like MCO and the Caribbean, they tend not to overbook as they know everyone shows up for those routes.

In the image below, you see the exact number of Premium and Upper seats left on VS 23. But for VS141 Economy and Premium doesn’t have an “x seats left at this price” line. That means there’s 4+ seats for those cabins. This works exactly the same for revenue tickets. Search one way on the day of departure to see how many cash tickets they’re willing to sell in each cabin. That will give you an idea of the flight load.

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Final tips

It’s not uncommon for me to ask multiple times about upgrades. This is normal, the staff don’t mind and if you don’t ask, they won’t get offered up on a silver platter. Ask at check in, if the answer is no, ask again in the clubhouse or the ticketing desk before the gate opens. Ask again at the gate. Most of my upgrades in the US coming back to London have been done at the gate. Get down there early so the staff have time to make it happen before boarding. As I say above, they’ll need to call GTS and it sometimes takes 5-10 minutes to complete this, so you don’t want to be doing it after boarding has started.

When you do a points upgrade, your fare bucket will change to P for Premium or G for Upper. That often breaks the points earning workflow. So, after your flight, make sure your points credit for your underlying cash fare. If they don’t, ring VS and have it corrected. You are entitled to the points of the underlying cash fare.

That’s pretty much everything I know about upgrading Virgin Atlantic flights. As I remember or find out more information, I will edit this post.

Happy upgrading!

(Mods, I wonder if this could be pinned/stickied so it doesn't get lost?)
Last edited by CommanderB on 03 Mar 2024, 17:15, edited 5 times in total.
#962615 by ianrother
18 Oct 2023, 18:23
Great post and very useful information. I have been travelling to Orlando with my family for 20 yrs and even in the school hols have always managed to get at least Premium economy reward tickets and have upgraded with vouchers to First class quite a few times. It just takes patience and perseverance but it is worth it to save thousands on each flight
#962809 by Planelover
21 Nov 2023, 20:13
Good guide - might be worth mentioning that for most upgrades you now only receive the tier points and virgin points of the original fare. Exception being full reward tickets upgraded with miles. Seems to be a recent update - unless I just didn't notice before.
#962817 by CommanderB
22 Nov 2023, 12:14
Planelover wrote:Good guide - might be worth mentioning that for most upgrades you now only receive the tier points and virgin points of the original fare. Exception being full reward tickets upgraded with miles. Seems to be a recent update - unless I just didn't notice before.


Agreed. Added some amendments.
#963379 by CommanderB
20 Feb 2024, 12:11
Wigster wrote:If I want to do an upper upgrade, am i best to call at 5am UK to get this or do i have to wait until 7 when the Swansea cc opens?


You should be able to do this at any time, 24/7. I've called at some odd times and never had an issue.

The only time I really struggled was Christmas day when trying to price something the normal ticketing agents didn't have access to.
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