Aircraft Selection

How long before a flight is a specific Aircaft selected and is it possible to find out which Plane you'll be on in advance ?

[honey lamb]

You can get an idea of which aircraft you will be on by looking at the seat plan on the Manage your Flight page on the Virgin Atlantic website or looking at this page on V-Flyer.

You will only know the exact plane when you get to the gate since aircraft are subject to changes etc

This is , I guess the one question that gets asked all the time.

Virgin Operations will obviously know what aircraft is going to be used for what and the "manage your booking " page on the VS siter will reflect this!

However - as they say on their site - this is no guaranee of what metal will be used for the flight.

The second point is that it creates a security risk if the actual aircarft name is widely known - lets say a VIP was on a particular flight - it would therefore nto be too tricky for someone wishing to do harm to target that aircraft if it was known in advace.

As ever - the best guide is on this site - go to here for the best information.

Have fun

Blimey HL - you just got in there!!!

Thanks guys, what a find this site had been. [y]

Thanks Craig, its great to have you on board[y]

If you want to get an even better experience then you might want to consider becoming a member - I have a link at the bottom of this post - you get extra areas to post into and exchange information and a neat set of luggage tags and business cards!! Have a look and see what you think!!

[^]

Mark,

I'm going to go for the membership, if I remember I'll do it tonight, (I need to retreive my Paypal details on PC at home).

Originally posted by A380
Mark,

I'm going to go for the membership, if I remember I'll do it tonight, (I need to retreive my Paypal details on PC at home).

Top man!!![y][y][y][y]

Having said that, VS can and do change planes at the last minute for various operational reasons.

Took last Tuesday's flight to JFK. Checked in at 4:20pm for the 6pm flight and was given my internet check-in selected 10A seat. At this stage, I knew it was a A340-600. At 4:45pm in the VS Clubhouse, they announce a 2 hour delay to the flight as they have to change aircraft.

At the Gate when boarding the ticket machine goes beep. My memory does go back to the days when I travelled in Y/PE and that would be good news as it would mean that your seat had changed since you got your boarding pass - this normally means an upgrade. However, I was in UC this time the only upgrade possible will be to sit on captain's lap! (Hmmmm! [:w])

They did change my seat to 1A as they changed the aircraft to an A340-300. Not sure why the late change around. Might have been something wrong with the original flight but, call me a spectic, I suspect that since the load on the was so low to/from JFK on a Tuesday, they switched to a smaller plane. Despite, UC seats reducing by a third, there were still several empty middle seats in UC. Bummer - no AVOD on the A340-300.

The late LAX flight was also delayed so I think they may have swapped planes around.

[ChuckC]

A380,
Thank you very much for your membership.

Chuck-

The "which aircraft" is becoming less of an issue these days, I think, as the aircraft layouts and facilities are starting to standardise across the sub-fleets.


I think all the active fleet has UCS now, right?
LGW/MAN planes are almost identical from a seating PoV, and you're more likely to get a Nova acft than anything else - there's only VTOP and VAST which have Odyssey.
LHR is now dominated by the A340-600, and they are all very similar, and you have a 1 in 6 chance of not getting v-port (by ending up on VXLG) on the 744 fleet.


It's interesting that this question comes up on the VS forums, and I don't often see it anywhere else.

I wonder if it's because VS give their aircraft an "identity", with the witty names and the Varga Girl on the nose, or it's because there were so many differences between the individual VS aircraft, even within the sub-fleets, in the past?

Cheers,
Mike

Originally posted by mike-smashing


I think all the active fleet has UCS now, right?

From the aircraft database here, the following aircraft still do not have UCS:

Maiden Toulouse A343 G-VAEL
Plain Sailing A343 G-VSEA

And from the movements of each they're doing Lagos, Mumbai and Newark on occasion. I'm presuming this situation can't go on much longer? ( About to raise this in a separate post... )

Thanks,

David.

[mcmbenjamin]

EF can provide the tail numbers, sometimes prior to the flight (but not too long prior).

Thanks A380 for your membership. It means a bunch! Props to you.

Originally posted by David_Doyle
From the aircraft database here, the following aircraft still do not have UCS:

Maiden Toulouse A343 G-VAEL
Plain Sailing A343 G-VSEA

Nope, the only 2 not to have UCS are:
G-VAEL Maiden Toulouse: LHR 343 Arcadia
G-VFLY Dragon Lady: LHR 343 Arcadia

(see here)
G-VSEA was marked as being "in progress" in Mar/April - given that we're almost in June, I think we can assume she's been "done" - obviously missed that completion in the aircraft database [:I], but it's now done.

Don't forget the following (from here) too:
GVSUN Rainbow Lady LHR343 (*currently with Vigin Nigeria)
GVBUS Lady in Red LHR343 (*currently with Vigin Nigeria)

So, all the active & to be retained fleet are now UCS, unless SUN & BUS are doing VS routes still.

Cheers

Michael

Hi,

Recently booked a trip to NY in October going out on VS3 and returning a week later on VS4 in PE. I was hoping to grab a couple of seats on the upper deck as I have done before but when managing my flights on the Virgin Atlantic website I am being given the seat plan for a 343-300. Looks like the 747 will not be on this route soon.

Great website, have found it very useful.

Originally posted by KenJohn
Might have been something wrong with the original flight but, call me a spectic, I suspect that since the load on the was so low to/from JFK on a Tuesday, they switched to a smaller plane.

Not at all, it was a tech problem, and quite a few flights got switched/ crews switched etc at the last minute. Can't remember the exact reason (its saved somewhere in my Email) but a config change due to low booking is very unlikely to happen on the day.