Buying an UC upgrade

can anyone help
Have been tryng to buy an upgrade from PE to UC on VS019 on 21st June, spoke to both reservations and FC both have quoted £12k for 2 yet you can book a round trip for less than £5K.. surley they must be some flexabilty when the UC cabin is less than 50% full

On the sale fare watch you can get returns for £1640 all through June. You might be better to cancel he PE ( if refundable) and book new tickets

[preiffer]

Not June, Paul - it's from July 21st...

http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/gb/en/id ... fares.html

can anyone help
Have been tryng to buy an upgrade from PE to UC on VS019 on 21st June, spoke to both reservations and FC both have quoted £12k for 2 yet you can book a round trip for less than £5K.. surley they must be some flexabilty when the UC cabin is less than 50% full

Sadly it doesn't work like that. Only a limited number of UC seats on each flight are available for cheap upgrades or rewards, irrespective of how full the cabin is. Once they're gone they're gone, even if there are still plenty of seats available.

And unfortunately the SFO UC sale is only from July 21 to Sep 2.

When is your return? If you're going on 21 June then I guess you're at least travelling over a Saturday? I'm seeing £5,223 as the minimum UC fare in I class departing 21 June for at least a week.

What's happened is that you've likely lost the ability to book a Z fare, your flight shows:

J9 C9 D9 I9 Z9 W9 S9 K7 Y8 B7 R7 L7 U7 M7 E7 Q6 X3 N1 O0 availability, but Z's are the cheapest in UC and come with advanced booking restrictions, now expired. So the next class up is I which is now available.

As an alternative, what fare class are you in PE in and do you have miles? VS shows upgrades available on the 21st so if you have 12,500 miles and the extra tax and fees of about £200, you could upgrade through that route?

thanks for all your help guys ...
looks like we will enjoy the PE cabin outwards and enjoy the UC cabin on the return from LAX 7th July...

If you really want to sit in the pointy end then it is worth considering buying up to an S fare now so that if and when miles upgrades are available you can grab them before someone else does. Trying to do this at the airport will take time and may not be possible (never tried actually).

Also if you do not have enough miles don't forget you can buy some. Best to get everything prepared ready as you probably will not get time to mess about if an UC seat becomes avaiable.