Booking/Overbooking of seats

Hi all,
Ms C and I are off to Antigua next Saturday the 8th on VS033 for a week and are going Z on the way out and S on the way back (VS034). I couldn't get Z on the return leg as there was no availability.

I have had a quick look on expertflyer and it shows one free J class seat on the return VS034 leg. I then went onto the Virgin website and booked a pretend trip on the same dates as my own for two people. It then offered me a different outbound date but it did attempt to sell me two J class tickets for the return journey on my plane. I confirmed this as I went through the booking and saw the single seat disappear from expertflyer.

So the question I have is if I were one of the people with a confirmed UC return journey and I or someone else bought those two UC return seats on VS034, would one of those passengers find out that they had no UC seat on the return journey from ANU to LGW? How would they find out given that return check-in can be done by some hotels on-site and given there is only one seat left in W too, how would this all be handled?

I understand the concept of overbooking seats but surely on B&S routes and especially on the return legs surely Virgin risks seriously upsetting people and losing repeat business?

Churz

Andy

[Nottingham Nick]

I never hold expertflyer.com as being 100% accurate. I have had experiences where it has shown a full plane for days, then changed at the last minute. I have also had flights where it has shown as wide open, but the plane has been full.

I think you are right that the leisure routes are not routinely oversold, for the obvious reason that leisure flyers are highly unlikely to be no-shows, and the vast bulk of tickets sold on these routes are non-flexible ones.

I suppose there could be several reasons for your experience - Virgin may be able to tap directly into tickets that are currently allocated to other suppliers (VH for example). Tying down exact availability always seems to me to be a very fluid and unpredictable science. YVMV however. [:D]

We have seen on V-Flyer the effect that it has on people when their holiday plans are upset by oversold UC, and you are spot on, in that it is not good for repeat business when that happens.

If the plane is oversold, then they would normally ask for volunteers for offload, and in my experience the lure of a free round trip ticket is sufficient for the requisite number of Y passengers to put their hands up. Downgrades are somewhat more emotive, however.


Nick

Expert flyer gives you an idea but is not accurate at all.

The chance of having to be downgraded is very rare in fact is not even worth worrying about.

Originally posted by declansmith
Expert flyer gives you an idea but is not accurate at all.

The chance of having to be downgraded is very rare in fact is not even worth worrying about.

I beg to disagree. It's the beginning of March, yet already this year om three of my flights from LHR VS have been asking people to downgrade from UC to PE. LHR may be the key here as it's business types who book flexible fares.

Originally posted by slinky09

Originally posted by declansmith
Expert flyer gives you an idea but is not accurate at all.

The chance of having to be downgraded is very rare in fact is not even worth worrying about.

I beg to disagree. It's the beginning of March, yet already this year om three of my flights from LHR VS have been asking people to downgrade from UC to PE. LHR may be the key here as it's business types who book flexible fares.

Off topic, but I'm curious... what does VS offer as compensation if you're downgraded from say UC to PE... and do they still give you the limo, CH, etc?