Economy cabin booking.

Hi,

I have booked flights for summer 2019, MAN to MCO direct - 16th July, returning in August.

Economy delight seats.

We originally booked the later flight but then received confirmation that the later flight had been cancelled and we had been moved onto the earlier one at 10:05.

When I visited the VA website again and did a dummy booking for our dates it says that there is NO availability at all on the 16th in the economy cabin?!? This strikes me as very odd?

I had an online chat with VA who simply said that economy was sold out on that date... they also added that websites like expert flyer may show availability but that the cabin was indeed sold out but some tickets may have been purchased by third party sellers and so are yet to be allocated hence EF would show the seats as available?!

I am wondering if they intend to cancel this flight as it seems very strange to me that one particular date is completely sold out? so early on? and it's not actually in the school holidays although in our area schools break up on the 19th of July (due to staff training days) and we travel on the 16th, so it is very close...

The only reassurance I have is that 'my booking' is still showing our selected seats and also PE and UC are still on sale for my dates...

Am I being overly suspicious? It's just that I would rather know sooner rather than later so that I can adjust our villa dates and it would also be good to know prior to booking car hire, airport hotel etc...

Ali x

[mitchja]

When VS cancel and or merge flights, they often stop selling that particular merged flight for a while. I guess it gives them time to inform everyone and to also move everyone effected.

There is nothing much you do other than wait though unfortunately .

Thank you, that does make sense and it had crossed my mind. I guess as we were informed 6 days ago of the change I just presumed it would not take them this long to sort things out!

Thanks again.

[mitchja]

When VS moved my JFK>MAN flight in January from Thursday to the following day, the new Friday flight wasn't on sale for well over a week.

Mind you that was made worse as the A/C switched from an A333 to a B744 as well.

Ok, thanks. I will keep an eye on my booking just in case.....

Just as an aside, should a flight be cancelled do you have a say in which alternative flight they move you onto? ie if our Tuesday flight was to be cancelled we would prefer to move to the Monday. Could they insist that you flew on the Wednesday?

Thanks.

No they can’t insist. Just seems a tendency to move people to day after flights rather than day before. I’d have thought they’d be happy to have you fly day earlier as it leaves room for other people who can’t go earlier.

Thanks for that, again makes perfect sense!