Premium to the Caribbean??

Hi everyone,

I've been reading this lovely forum for many years and it's been so helpful, having planned our last few years of holidays around Virgin routes!

Anyway, we're looking at next year's holiday and are hoping to go to the Caribbean during the school Easter holidays (any time between 6th April and returning 22nd April 2019), either Barbados or Antigua. I was hoping to fly Premium but I'm not seeing any availability at all past the end of March 2019 on either route. I've looked at straight cash options as well as using miles and there's still nothing other than Economy or Upper. Am I looking to early (or too late!) or are there really no Premium seats to the Caribbean in April next year?!

Virgin Holidays doesn't have the option of upgrading to Premium either so I haven't got a clue what's going on! Have I missed something?

Many thanks for your help!

Probably routes being operated with the temporary Air Berlin planes that don't have a premium cabin

Rotty is right. However I'll change the answer very slightly:

"Probably routes being operated with the temporary Air Berlin planes that don't yet have a premium cabin."

The Air Berlin A330-200s are due to be refitted to give them a 'proper' Upper Class and add Premium Economy. You say you want to fly next year. Nobody outside of Virgin's management knows for sure when the refit will actually take place but the current best guess is October 2018. That means there will probably be Premium seats when you want to fly in 2019 but you won't be able to book them until Virgin is certain they will actually exist!

We have PE seats booked on our return leg from ANU on 4th December - there are none available in November for our outward journey. PE seats are also available on that route in Jan and Feb 19, how strange that they have disappeared from the April flights.

Ah OK, thank you everyone! I will keep checking and see what I can find then, but it looks like it will have to be economy.

If you do book Economy, see if you can get them to add a note to your booking that you were trying to book PE but couldn't because none was showing on the inventory. That way if PE does become available later you might be able to convince them to let you buy up to PE without having to pay a change fee - no harm in asking!

Good idea, thank you!