Upgrading from PE > UC

Good Morning V-Flyers

im new to the board to apologies if this has been answered elsewhere.

I am flying to Hawaii to get married next year (itinerary updated) and have used my points to upgrade my seats.

on the way out I have upgraded to UC (class G) and on the way back I have upgraded to PE (class P).

I have enough points to upgrade from PE>UC on the return leg but when I have asked the seats are unavailable.

Is this because the seats have not been made available yet or is it because the PE seats I have been allocated are not eligible for upgrade?

Thank You Kindly!
J

[Neil]

Hi and welcome to the site.

Firstly, congratulations on your upcoming celebrations.

In answer to your question, what you are finding, i.e. lack of UC reward seats on ex West Coast to the UK flights, is something that is becoming very common. There are only so many reward/miles seats on each flight, and sometimes they don't release any. It seems Virgin have become very stingy on the release of UC seats from the West Coast recently.

Your ticket type is fine, it really is just a matter of checking on a daily (even twice daily) basis to see if any UC miles seats become available. They are just randomly released when revenue management decide they are feeling kind!

I'm also looking at West Coast flight for next year, and while there are loads of options outbound, there is hardly any from any of the West Coast airports (LAX/SFO/LAS/YVR) during April & May.

Good luck in finding some
Neil

Thank you for your reply.

Whats the best way to check about the upgrades? all I have been doing is emailing the girl at virgin and asking. Ive done this once a month.

Don't want to pester her too much!

[Neil]

The quickest way would be to do a dummy miles booking on the VS site. Select your route/dates/class and just click the spend miles option instead of the automatically select +/-3 days money option.

This will show you if there is availability on your dates, and if not, what dates do have availability.

Like I said, you should really try to check at least once a day (morning is best) as it is an ever changing situation and you have to be quick to get them.

Just out of interest, I assume you have booked your flights direct with Virgin Atlantic and not as part of a package?

Rgds,
Neil

Yes, booked everything through virgin atlantic direct. Its not a package

I just used the calculator and ...Your choice of reward seat is not available...

Ill keep trying each day and hopefully something will appear. Can you upgrade via the website or would I have to call virgin themselves?

thank you v much!

[Neil]

To do the upgrade you will have to give Virgin a call.

I'd also use a seatcheck tool daily to see load factor on flight. If there are lots of UC available, it may be more likely a G will be released. If the flight is full, not a chance.

Maybe being a little slow here, where do I find that?

[Neil]

Flight stats website has a free load check tool.

Here is the link:

http://www.flightstats.co.uk/FlightAvai ... ability.do

Sorry I didn't post the link earlier, I thought everyone was using it already - it proved useful for me a couple of times.

Anyone know of a tool that can automatically check for G's?

[Neil]

The only tool out there is rewardseats.com, but that has it's limitations (only being able to search for one seat), but it still can be useful.