This is a Trip Report from the Economy cabin
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We were a party of four (me, my wife and the two kids aged 3 and 8) and the flight was due to leave at 10.30am from London Gatwick.
After the usual dreaded early start we took the Gatwick Express train from London Victoria, arriving at the airport at around 8am.
I'd already done OLCI so we made our way to zone A to the bag drop queue. The airport didn't seem too busy considering it was the Friday before school half-term.
As we joined the bag drop queue one of the Virgin staff greeted us and immediately asked if we would be interested in flying 'tomorrow instead of today' for what I thought was £80 per person. She quickly said we probably wouldn't be interested what with us travelling with children etc. We said 'no thanks' and moved on down the queue.
It was at this point I asked my wife to clarify how much compensation they were offering for delaying for a day. She said she thought the woman had said £508 per person.
Wait a minute! That's £2032 in total for our party of four representing about 4/5 of the total cost of our fare! In addition they would put us up in the Hilton at Gatwick and cover the cost of our lunch, dinner and breakfast before flying on the same flight the very next day.
After a quick discussion we decided this was something we DID want to take up and I went back to check the offer was still open, which it was.
So what happened next was we were taken out of the queue and told that we would need to wait until check-in closed before knowing for certain whether we would be travelling 'today' or not. In the meantime we were given £40 worth of food vouchers to go off and get some breakfast and told to return at 9.20am.
On our return I noticed there was another family (couple and a child) waiting to do the same thing, plus another couple (so 9 people in total).
After a bit more of a delay with lots of staff on the phone checking seats and numbers we were finally told that we were definitely flying the next day, along with the other family. The couple did end up on the flight they booked, much to their disappointment!
Next we were passed onto a customer services desk where another member of Virgin staff processed our cash vouchers and issued us with new tickets for the next day. They also sorted out the hotel booking.
I told the lady that I had specifically booked the 'two-ers' at the back. Ie 63 a/c and 64 a/c and wanted to try and get the same seats the next day. I was told these were unavailable and offered the four in a row bulkhead seats. I pushed a little bit and said I didn't want to be awkward but stated that we were being disadvantaged because in my opinion the seats weren't as good as what we had originally booked. She went off and talked to somebody and came back and offered us four of the extra legroom seats ( ie purple seats) at no extra cost. I happily accepted this offer.
We got our new tickets with the seat booking scribbled onto one of them and went off and checked into the hotel. Two rooms with adjoining door. Perfect for a family with 2 kids.
To pass the time we went into Crawley which is the nearest town to Gatwick, had a bit of lunch and did a bit of shopping. After a great buffet dinner at the Hilton in the evening and a similarly great buffet breakfast the next day we were ready to check in for our new flight.
One of the Virgin staff from the day before recognised us and couldn't have been more helpful. She led us straight too the front of what turned out to be a lane for Silver FC members (we are only red) and I started checking in. However there was a slight issue. It turned out that whoever was managing seat allocation had not been informed of our seat booking from the previous day. So the seats had already been allocated to someone else. After a quite lengthy delay during which the the check-in person disappeared she eventually came back with 3 alternative 'purple' seats plus one emergency exit seat (ie with no seat in front). This was fine as far as I was concerned.
I was a little worried about one of our bags being overweight and mentioned this to the helpful virgin staff member who was acting as our unofficial 'chaperone' and she had a quiet word with the check-in girl and told her to just put everything through. In the end the bag was only 26kg but the limit is 23kg I think and I wasn't sure how strict they would be (we were only checking in three out of our four bag allocation and the other two were quite light, so I'd like to think there would not have been an issue).
Once on the plane (turned out to be the Tubular Bells 747) there was a slight problem in that the 3 purple seats were one row away from the emergency exit seat. We were supposed to be together. Luckily a generous passenger offered to swap so we could all be together.
The flight was good. The entertainment system had to be 'reset' due to lots of the screens not working properly, but this seems quite common. The extra leg room really made a difference so we will have quite a dilemma coming home in terms of whether to pay the £120 extra (assuming we even get offered).
Currently having a nice time in Barbados after a very eventful first leg of our trip!
Paul
Obviously a good way of dealing with overbooking in an environment predominately made up of holidaymakers
