LGW UCS - Did Virgin get numbers wrong?

Hi all!

Just a thought, I for one has found since the UCS was introduced on the Gatwick fleet that availability is obviously limited and have yet to be on a flight where it is not full! I will admit I am probably travelling at peak times most of the time, so never thought to much of it! Recently however I have noticed that it is almost if not impossible to book a reward UC ticket on a Gatwick flight. Initially I thought I was just being beat to it, but about a month ago someone at Virgin told me that it was because they are not really releasing any milage tickets for UC from Gatwick, a few but very limitted at low seasons!
Anyway to get onto my point, on a recent flight I got chatting to one of the supervisors and this came up, which they agreed they had heard and several frequent flyers had mentioned it to them! More than that though they mentioned that the issue extended past the milage tickets and also to full revenue tickets!
She said the flights are getting booked up early these days, especially with the Virgin Holidays allocation that some of the regular passangers who had been used to just calling up and getting a UC ticket without having to do it a long way in advance could not do this anymore! Anyway her point or concern seemed to be that many were being forced to fly with other airlines, obviously BA being one of these and that she had heard stories of frequent business flyers getting upset at all this and moving copletly to say BA or another airline as they were "fed up of not being able to get a seat"!

Just wondered if anyone had experience of not being able to get a UC ticket when they wanted or heard similar things!

Wow that ended up being a long post, apologies for that! Just seemed a worrying trend to be, no airline can afford to loose high revenue tickets! The real shame is the UCS is such a great product!!

Michael

[honey lamb]

I rang VS on June 20th this year and got two Z tickets to MCO for 16th July which I would have considered the beginning of the peak period given that UK school holidays beging about then. On my outbound flight there was one empty suite and there would have been more except that a BA plane to MCO went tech and VS took the passengers from that flight.

I spent a bit of time looking into our February holiday a while back: almost zero availability to the Caribbean on VS on reward tickets, and very limited Z availability. [:(]

BC

snap no chance for u/c mileage in march 2006 !!! [n]

Granted they are harder to come by.

However - They are still there - Last weekend I picked up a "Miles Plus Money" "Upper Class" to Orlando for Saturday Novemebr the 5th.

The trick seems to be mix the class - There was no "Upper Class" both ways, but there was plenty of "Upper Class" going out, and "Premium Economy" coming back.

It seems to me that if there's no availibility on one of the legs, the system shows both as unavailible.

Hope this helps.

I suppose in Virgin's mind this is good news and less seats sold/given away at lower revenue plus it makes the cachet of UC even more desireable.
However, if they cannot get the service and food right, they will lose many of these full fare pax in the long term.

[fozzyo]

Dean and I talked about this after our recent MCO return. I am sure VS did all the numbers and worked it all out. Yes it can be really hard getting reward flights now, Vegas I imagine is impossible. On our MCO return flight there were only six of us in UC, but the entire plane was quiet - 150 on-board, and we were on reward tickets.

My take on it. Gatwick serves mostly B&S routes, and I imagine most pax on those routes won't pay for UC, but they will probably pay for PE. When working out the seating config they will have looked at how many PE seats they can fill as opposed to UC, ISTR that in a previous discussion PE was noted as the most profitable class on the VS fleet. So if they can fill them then they will make more money.

Would be interesting to see what the loads are like on all the flights. I guess there will be one or two that could benefit from a LHR config, Vegas being one. But having different configs fly from LGW would make for operational nightmares I guess if / when one goes out of service and another plane is used. So its easier to use all the same configs to minimise downgrades and bumbing people off.

Mat xxx

Of course it is also fair to say that VS's primary concern is not to make sure there are enough UCS reward tickets available. VS are pretty good with this generally, compared with other airlines, but maybe in this case they are having to be a bit stingy.

Personally I am always amazed at the relative price of UCS tickets into MCO - especially, as was pointed out recently, compared to a UCS ticket to MIA. The argument that is always thrown at the 'PE is too expensive' argument is one of supply and demand - well if the UCS demand is high then surely it is time to hike prices.

Phil (Buffy)

Yeah, I had this problem when I tried to book my flight to Houston. VS told me again and again that they didn't have any seats:D:D. Had to fly BA. This was the flight I had to change last minute and ended up flying to orlando. Could have flown VS anyway.

But on a serious note, I always try to book well in advance with VS directly and haven't as yet (touch wood) had any problems with revenue, companion reward, full reward or miles plus money. Only a month ago I booked 1 rev and 1 companion into UC for June next year (still pretty far in advance I know). I did have some flexability with the dates but basically got what I wanted.


Paul

I managed to get a reward to MCO in March next year. Had to be flexible around the dates though!!

[Decker]

We managed to get a couple of Gs out to MCO next March. Probably helped that we're coming back in G from MIA though.

Hi all,

Thanks for the responses. My discussion onboard the other week with crew was not so much over the availability of reward seats, which I do find a little annoying, but hey thats life! She was saying that many customers who used to be able to book a full fare ticket within a few weeks or months of the flight are struggling to do this now as the UCS often sell out!
So they are forced to travelling with another airline like BA who has seats either in First or certainly Club as they have many more seats thats Gatwick UCS! Her concern was that some were staying with BA for their business flights as well, as they prefered using one airline!
My guess is their feelings are if they use one airline they get better reward milage / tier points! Although with BA's milage rewards I am not sure thats true, but thats another topic entirely!! Although now it is so difficult to get a Virgin UC reward ticket from Gatwick they may have a point on that score as well!

[Scrooge]

It's not only LGW that has this problem,try getting a reward seat to/from LHR,when we tried back in March for a Sept flight we were told there were none available till Nov,so we ended up on BA.

We will be booking a flight for 12 next month for Oct 06,if I cant get my up-grades we will be flying BA again,not becuase we wont to may I stress,but because I can get an upgrade to Club and the price for WT+ is less (try $600 less) than PE..when you throw in the fact that it's 12 tickets that makes a difference.

So yes VS may well need to add UC on LGW,but they also need to losen tup a little with the rewards,because as you said,buisness travelers will fly with whatever airline will give them the reward flights for their personal use.

Originally posted by jetwet1
It's not only LGW that has this problem,try getting a reward seat to/from LHR,when we tried back in March for a Sept flight we were told there were none available till Nov,so we ended up on BA.

I know this may not be of a great deal of use to everyone for planning purposes, but the theory I mentioned a few months ago that award flights open up for UC exactly five days before the flight goes seems to hold a lot of water. I did a daily check over a period of two weeks looking for flights to EWR/JFK/IAD/MIA/LAX/SFO and as if by magic 90% of the time exactly five days before the flight they open up. I didn't pay too much attention to the LGW flights I'm afraid.

So this is good if you don't need to organise yourself too far in advance for very short (ie, weekend) trips. I've been in a position to do two return flights this way over the past year or so.

Cheers, Howard

I was unable to get a UC ticket on an upcoming ANU-LGW-ANU flight and ended up with BA instead.

Funny thing was that the day after I purchased the ticket with BA the availibility did appear, however the price had gone up some four hundred pounds and change (prior to that both tickets cost the same...to the penny).

This was 4-5 weeks prior to the flight.

Maybe they are keener to sell miles + money rather than just miles. I have just booked 4 UC miles + money seats to ANU next April. They are for just before the start of sailing week so I was really suprised that there was any deals at all. Checking the seat map the four seats I have booked are the only ones taken and availability shows there is at least another 8 seats available!

Maybe they are keener to sell miles + money rather than just miles. I have just booked 4 UC miles + money seats to ANU next April. They are for just before the start of sailing week so I was really suprised that there was any deals at all. Checking the seat map the four seats I have booked are the only ones taken and availability shows there is at least another 8 seats available!

[Scrooge]

On the Miles+money topic,we in the United States cannot do that,for whatever reason VS had chosen us as unfit for this perk..

After talking to Paul and Pete I checked everyday,three times aday to see if VS felt like letting a couple of seats go for us,right up until the morning we left for LAX..Sad to say they didnt want to release two seats out of the 24 that went empty that day on VS8..oh well,saved me $1600 and got to try the old new club world for free.