New Booking

Does anyone know how to stop the price increasing for the third person in family in the following scenario, presumably caused by dynamic pricing.

On screen pricing for 1 Oct - 29 Oct 2 Pax £ 5133 (£2567 each), third Pax 1 Oct - 18 Oct £2760 fair enough.

To avoid price change/losing third booking I phone and make clear why I am phoning not booking online.

Agent books first two Pax at screen price, but then finds third persons price increased to over £4000 and is unable to amend.

Virgin computer obviously thinks this flight is of interest to several people - and consequently increases the price.

[mitchja]

It's probably down to their only being 2 of the lowest fares available, the 3rd person's fare is jumping up to the next higher fare code.

As far as I'm aware there is no dynamic pricing on any VS revenue fare. If there was you wouldn't see VS fares coming out roughly the same as BA fares on routes both carriers operate on.

The initial onscreen increase you were seeing is probably a Z fare > I fare whilst the agent was probably seeing Z > D or even possibly C fare.

When booking online direct with VS now with onward DL flight, I'm seeing a lot less availability of the lowest Z fare as many itineraries often end up being a mix of Z and I fares. My last 3 or 4 revenue bookings that have a mix of both VS + DL legs have all ended up with mix of Z and I fares.

The only other option is try booking via an online agent such as Expedia etc as they can have different availability for airline fares.

Thank you for your insight James!

Something has changed recently regarding this.

Every year I travel to Florida earlier than the rest of my family but we travel back together. A few years back I could just check the prices, make two bookings and it was all good. Then last year the price went up £3000 in UC immedicably after booking my family - exactly 24 hours later it returned to the earlier rate.

This year booking for around Easter it's been horrible, if anyone books in the UC cabin the price goes up and does not go down in short time. On expert flyer it showed: J9 D9 C9 I9 Z0, as soon as I booked my wife and daughter it changed to J9 D0 C0 I0 Z0 for the return flight. That was 2 weeks ago and it's not changed back despite the cabin only having a few people in it.

It's making the whole thing very tiresome. I do not think MAN > MCO return in UC is worth £7k but clearly Virgin does. I just want to get a price and book.

Jonathan

I had a look at the VS site the other day, first time in a few months, to do a comparison. TBH, it seems a bit bewildering, when did it all change so much?