Advance cancellation

What is supposed to happen when a flight is cancelled in advance?

By chance yesterday, I was looking on the VS website and spotted that one of the return flights (VS046) from JFK that my family is taking has been canned on March 22nd.

One call to a very nice agent on the Premier Team got people moved from the 46 to the 10, so now we're all travelling home together rather than "Noah" formation (2 on each flight) and all sitting together in snooze, which we're happy about.

Should VS have contacted me pro-actively rather than wait for me to find this out on my own. How late in the day would I have found out about the change had I not got luck on the VS website?

Any airline should make efforts to inform you of any schedule or flight change where possible.

When the flight change is notified, all bookings on that flight will be sent to a Que on the reservations computer system and then its up to the airline to work through the bookings, informing passengers of their options. They may in some cases notify the travel agent rather then the passenger directly, though with a Frequent Flyer number I would guess they would go back to the passenger.

I would guess that the cancellation was made fairly close to your discovery and they hadn't had chance to call. Depending on booked loads its going to take some time to work out what can be done with all those passengers.

My flight time changed for Nov, it changed 4 weeks ago, my online VH booking invoice shows the change and VA manage your seats, but neither one of the Virgin companies volunteered the info to me.

I hope Virgin are not mistakenly assuming that EVERYONE has access to the web and a pc, especially up here in North Yorkshire, we still have mobile libraries and butchers up here, lol.

This type of issues has been discussed quite a lot before here but it appears as though you are added to a list of people that should be contacted and in most cases the pax have contacted VS before VS called the pax. Be interesting to see what would happen is not call went from the pax into VS, but it won't be me testing that out...

Paul

Any changes do get put onto a queue for VS to call out to passengers (if there is a telephone number in the booking) which get actioned according to how urgent the flight is ie: tomorrow, next week or a few months.

There are always bookings with no telephone numbers in (booked through a travel agency) or where the number is either incorrect, or goes straight to 'generic' voicemail, where a message will be left, although not too detailed, as VS have to abide by the DPA.

Those people who check their bookings online DO normally find out before the callouts happen, as the people who do the call outs are also those friendly people who take your calls/make your bookings. When it is very busy on the incoming calls, there are fewer people allocated to call OUTGOING, hence sometimes not being until quite near the flight receiving details of your schedule change or cancelled (and re-booked) flight.

All in all VS will do all possible (including email, as a last resort) to advise of any changes.

Hope that helps,

Juliet

[mcmbenjamin]

So am I correct in thinking that the first notice by telephone? Would make sense if there is an email in the booking, to send an email ASAP about the change.

Yes, the first notice is by telephone, as there are no guarantees that the email address in the booking goes to the passenger, and VS have no way of tracking that it has been received (no return receipt requested available)

Also, this would not allow the traveller to advise that the new time does not work, if connecting flights had been booked, or other issues were there. If there were a 'standard' email system it would be automated, and have no place for a reply. This would mean the passenger would need to ring in to sort any issues. If the call has already been made, the agent calling out should be able to sort those issues at that time.

Hope that helps,

Juliet

(edited to make reading easier and grammar check)

[mcmbenjamin]

Thanks Juliet. Makes sense. Also was thinking of a email saying to call VS res. on a special number as there is a problem with your booking but that would scare some people. Worst case would be someone not knowing of a cancelation and showing up. Thanks again Juliet.

Originally posted by mcmbenjamin
Worst case would be someone not knowing of a cancelation and showing up.

Yeah it'll happen.

It always does.

Thanks, esp to Juliet for her detailed responses.