A330-200 aircraft change?

As many have sought since the intro of th ex-air Berlin A330-200s I believe (hopefully not in vain) that we may have an aircraft swap to the -300 for our return from Grenada (VS90) on Monday. Probably 2 days ago the seat map changed, now showing seemingly Premium Economy (although still labelled Economy) but all blocked off with the seat numbers changing in line with the 300as far I can tell.

Hoping for the off chance of an upgrade opportunity into PE I used the live chat feature on the website (x2 now) to ask an agent directly if the aircraft change was true and options for upgrades. Today ‘my booking’ also updated to show aircraft type as the 300 adding to my hopes of PE. However on my second live chat with an agent they don’t seem to see this change and have insisted that the seat map I am looking at is the 200 (even though I have the vs official seat maps against my actual seat map in front of my eyes).

Ultimately my question for the forum is whether anyone knows from other sources what aircraft type VS90 will be on Monday and what the process would likely be for upgrades? I assume as the flight was sold without PE they would now look to move people about?

Many thanks as always
FLYERZ

EF still showing a 332

VS (**) 90 1
GND 10/09/18 5:05 PM
LGW 11/09/18 8:50 AM
332
M
NA / NA
J0 C0 D0 I0 Z0 Y0 B0 R0 L0 U0 M0 E0 Q0 X0 N0 O0 V0 T0


David

[mitchja]

The flight will be been originally sold with Premium if it was on sale before the beginning of December 2017.

Anyone who had originally booked Premium and then consequently where downgraded to economy with the initial A/C swap will be put back in the Premium cabin.

No idea what or how VS then treat any remaining seats left in Premium though sorry?

Do we have any idea when the first 332 is scheduled to go in for refit?

I’m scheduled to be on one to Antigua in December and it’s showing premium available but I will be might unimpressed if an unrefitted version shows us - particularly given I have had this unpleasant experience to BGI earlier in the year...

My friend flew to Barbados on Friday and the a/c was switched to A330-300 from a -200. 40 seats available in premium when they asked at the check-in desk and they were offered those for £250 per person. They were quite early for check-in due to allowing extra tome for transport. Hope that helps.

That’s useful to know! I have kept checking and this is now confirmed as a switch to the -300. Fingers crossed for the upgrade although hoping we can upgrade with miles but we’ll see.

In terms of the refit I think I read Nov-18 somewhere but would imagine this will take time for all of the -200s to be serviced so by Dec probably a chance your aircraft may/may not be fitted with PE.

On a side note for anyone interested on our outbound on the 200 in Economy I thought the aircraft was fine. In terms of IFE the screens were responsive and high quality and loaded with the latest Vera content. The seats themselves aren’t overly uncomfortable but for me being 6ft (just) my legs did feel cramped. Fortunately I was on an aisle but still particularly for a night flight I would have struggled. Toilets are a bit shabby but nothing too offensive (seen worse on BA). All in all on a day flight in Y I didn’t find it too much of a downgrade...possibly more so if we had been in Upper as the air Berlin business seats look very basic and uninspired.

[mitchja]

Do we have any idea when the first 332 is scheduled to go in for refit?

I’m scheduled to be on one to Antigua in December and it’s showing premium available but I will be might unimpressed if an unrefitted version shows us - particularly given I have had this unpleasant experience to BGI earlier in the year...

VS are still saying 'The first of these box-fresh beauties will be part of our family from November.' as per this page

...so in theory to be in service again by November, the first one should be going in for refitting at the end of September or possibly October depending on how long it's going to take. Going off the A333 J cabin refits, it's probably going to be around 4-5 weeks again per A/C.

UPDATE: Completed OLCI spot on time, aircraft confirmed as A330-300 therefore with PE. Able to secure the seats we had selected 72hrs in advance (FC Red ) but very few spare seats showing otherwise and PE appearing blocked out to me. Will see what, if anything happens at the airport otherwise it seems as above that maybe there were a large number of people who had booked their flights far enough in advance that PE was still being sold and so have been automatically upgraded? My only query with this is no doubt when they were originally downgraded to Y due to the A330-200 slated surely they will have recieved a refund? Therefore to me it seems unlikely they would now be auto-upgraded back to PE at no charge...thoughts?

24hrs left in paradise
FLYERZ

The right thing to do would be to upgrade everybody who bought a W ticket to W seats, despite them already being refunded. Compensation for being messed around and it wouldn't cost them anything now anyway.

I'd like to see what happens here anyway..

I’ll let you know how it turns out. I agree with your logic but also wonder how goodwill plays against the chance at more revenues from last minute upgrade offers at check-in. It also depends on how busy the flight is and how many people originally booked in W originally - imagine this would only be a small handfull as when we booked nearlly 9months in advace the a330-200 without PE was already showing.

The -200 has 287 seats I think whilst -300 266 with a signifixantly reduced exonomy cabin so it could end up that some people are bumped to both PE and UC cabins....or if the flight is relatively quiet they can keep all economy passengers in the reduced size econ cabin without any shifting and no one in PE

For our flight on VS30 (BGI-LGW) a few months ago, those who had Economy seats in the -200 that corresponded to a seat number in Premium Economy in the -300 were upgraded at no cost when the aircraft was changed. Nothing was available for payment (in Upper Class anyway - we would have gladly upgraded with miles). There were grins aplenty in the PE cabin when everyone boarded and started sipping fizzy stuff.

Those who originally had a Premuim Economy booking before the aircraft change should hopefully have been allocated extra leg room seats on a Y ticket in the -300 at the time of downgrade, which (I believe) all happen to fall into Premium Economy in the -300. I guess in a round about way this is what CommanderB suggests should happen

Really none available for upgrade by mikes? That’s exactly what we were hoping of doing assuming most people wouldn’t be aware of the aircraft switch. I checked the seat map before and since the 72hr window for free FC red seat selection and the PE seats have always been blocked off so would seem they assigned them to people.

FINAL UPDATE:

At the risk of this turning into a mini Trip Report for our return leg VS90 Grenada-LGW via St Lucia (10-Sept), here it goes:

Just to provide context and the outcome of some of the below susipicions, with the aircraft switch from -200 to -300 our flight now had PE with the total number of seats reduced from 287 to 266. What ultimately seems too have happend was that 'the system' reassigned passengers (sadly no idea on what basis) leading to some passengers unwhittingly being bumped up to PE (including some clearly not expecting this, bringing their own dinner - KFC into PE!) and the reduced aircraft capacity leading to a full flight.


Grenada
Arriving at Grenada airport with the intention of asking for upgrade availability given the aircraft swap to the A330-300, I think we witnessed the global airport record for most number of check-in staff despite only 4 lanes of queing. Nevertheless the ratio of staff to customers if anything slowed the usually smooth check-in process to a crawl with some of the outsourced ground staff watching the others run the check-in process and others chatting to friends (unbelieveable, even for a third party ground handler). During this slow progression through the crew it was made clear to other passengers that todays flight was full and so any hopes of an upgrade went out the window, whilst we were still happy to avoide the ex-Air Berlin A330-200s.

Fast forward to boarding, everything seemed to be running smoothly with the crew confirming 136 PAX onboard from grenada with about 130 to board from St Lucia. The Captain announced that we would be leaving in the next 10 minutes and ran through the procedures for de-catering /boarding .etc once landed in St Lucia. Then seemingly as we were ready to depart ,the 3rd party ground agents (the same bunch from check-in) boarded the plane with clipboard in tow. Well aware of the aircraft change myself and having benefitted from a free upgrade courtesy of similar clipboards I knew this meant musical chairs was soon to begin. What was most surprising though was that no one was being upgraded! Passengers were being moved from their system-assigned PE seats down to Economy, and others were being moved within the Economy cabin (apparently for balancing for take-off).

Annoyingly and for 20 mins without explanation we sat on the tarmac whilst this carried on. The FSM and Captain did after our departure time inform us of the cause of the delay - the aircraft switch combine with seating rearrangements which had contirbuted to the ground staff (they truly did not outdo themsleves) completing paperwork incorrectly. For legal reasons this needed to be corrected to which the captain described 'they have no sense of urgency' in completing. Needless to say we were nearly an hour late in departing on the short 30min hop to St Lucia.

St Lucia
Landing in St Lucia, the cabin crew switches and some other boring things touched on above. We had been advised that given the earlier delay the St Lucia ground crew (VS not outsourced) and cabin crew were ready and waiting to expedite the process allowing us to leave St Lucia within 10mins of the scheduled departure. To add insult to injury on boarding of St Lucia PAX it became clear that the seat allocation issues were still not resolved. Another clipboard-clad ground staff member proceeded to walk up and down the cabin asking to see boarding passes and painfully moving people about. Cabin Crew and Captain did very well at holding their hands up and admitting that the above had not been handled well and noted that a faster route had been filed with more fuel loaded to get us back on track. Landed into Gatwick 5mins ahead of schedule but a very painful experience, perhaps unavoidable due to the aircraft swap, but exacerabated massively by Grenada and St Lucia ground staff.

What an absolute farce.

I've complained over much smaller things... i'd complain and try and get some miles out of it.

What an absolute farce.

I've complained over much smaller things... i'd complain and try and get some miles out of it.

6,000 miles per person