Finding O class fares - Cuba, or anywhere

Hi there,

I have a Red Select ticket from when I was bumped from a Virgin flight. I'm struggling to find any routes with O class fares. Has anyone got any tips for best way to use these complimentary tickets?

Ideally I would use the ticket to visit Cuba, but I've been looking at fare codes and can find flights with N or X, but none that are O. Close, but no (Cuba) cigar.

I wish I had taken the cash instead now.

Thanks,
James

[Neil]

Hi and welcome.

It's really difficult to search for a specific fare code on the VS website. I would give Virgin a call and the staff will be able to search a range of dates much quicker and easier than you could.

If you really want to try and search yourself, try a site like flightstats which will show fare codes available on a given flight, but it is rather a long winded way of doing it.

Neil

Whilst I agree with Neil on the irritating lack of an easy way to search for Os, one suggestion would be to hold off till the sale that usually comes around at the end of August (ok, no guarantees of course!). O is used as a sale fare code and you tend to get more of them available as a result.

That's assuming of course you're not in a mad rush to book something now?

I had some red vouchers last year, and was quite lucky in finding the Os to where we wanted (st Lucia) and when (december, but towards the beginning so no Xmas rush). I think looking outside the busy periods will certainly help.

I didn't know any fancy searches then, and recall that we looked for dates with the cheapest fares, and then they happened to be Os. We booked it 6 or 7 months before travel, so not super early.

If you want to try and find some O fares yourself, perhaps ita matrix might do the trick if you enter "vs/f bc=I" in the advanced code box. Haven't tried it myself (normally use this to price up the Ms), but might be worth a try.

When do they expire?

And Os are often sales fares (as I thought are Ns) so perhaps waiting for the sale would help.