Help with compensation vouchers

Hello. Hope someone out there can advise.

Someone I know received some free flight vouchers after a huge delay from MCO to the UK. They were in the form of a letter with no small print - just free flights anywhere. She's now come to book and VA are saying she can only have economy(X) seats and there are none available. She's not been allowed to upgrade at her own expense to more expensive seats or PE, even tho the flight isn't full, and even tho there were no conditions on the letter.

The reason I'm so interested is we are just in the process of booking our 50% off seats, acquired for similar reasons, and appear not to be having a problem.

Can anyone advise?

[Pete]

Hi Edie, welcome to the board.

Is it because you're trying to get a specific date, and X-class is already sold out on that flight? If so, it's probably worth downloading the Availability Tool (link is on the Sabre page), and looking for flights on days around your original planned date for when there is X availability.

The reason you can't upgrade in advance is because they are X-class tickets, which means they come under the normal X-class rules. However, that said, you can generally do an airport upgrade for cash regardless of the ticket code if there is space available.

Pix