VS policy on throwaway tickets?

My husband and I will be traveling in UC next week SFO-LHR on Delta award tickets. There is some danger that DL will go belly-up during our trip, leaving us stranded or delayed.

(For those not familiar with the "rules" in such a situation: VS will have no obligation to honor the return portion of the award tickets if DL shuts down. U.S. airlines are required by law to honor our DL-issued award tickets for a fee of $50 each, but only on a "space available" basis, which is likely to cause major delays in getting home and/or force us into the dreaded economy seats. We have limited flexibility on our return date.)

Just to be on the safe side, I've been checking the prices of one-way LHR-SFO tickets in UC. Not surprisingly, it will cost a small fortune to purchase one-way tickets at the last minute. Like most airlines, a VS one-way fare costs substantially more than a return ticket.

So naturally the temptation is to buy a return ticket (LHR-SFO-LHR), use the LHR-SFO portion and throw the return away. However, I know some airlines are quite aggressive about preventing this. Some will actually bill the customer the difference between the lower return fare and higher one-way fare, if the customer fails to use the return portion. Does anyone here know if this is true of VS?

I did try a search for "throwaway" and some other likely terms, but didn't turn up anything pertinent. Thanks for any advice you can offer.

Free101girl,

I've thrown away returns on other airlines without issue in relation to virgin however this is something ive not yet needed to do. I suspect you'd be fine as at the end of the day there must be many people who dont fly back for legitimate reasons.

I'd call FC to confirm but I'd be surprised if you had issues

How long are you going for? It's highly unlikley that we'll shut down in the next week

[mcmbenjamin]

As Mike says, it takes a lot more than a silly pilots marching in front of the airport about lowering the average pilot salary below the current USD148,000/year.

Originally posted by webdes03
How long are you going for? It's highly unlikley that we'll shut down in the next week

We'll be traveling for several weeks. The pilots could strike as early as April 16 (or so the union asserts). If that happens DL will shut down within 48 hours, in the opinion of many.

Not saying it's likely, just possible. Remember Eastern Airlines? Remember Pan Am? No one wanted to believe they would shut down, either.

Of all the bankrupt airlines, DL is in the worst shape. I'm trying to be prepared just in case.

I've thrown away a return portion on VS just once, and it was because I was on a fixed/non-changeable ticket, and I had to fly to ORD for business, from SFO, so couldn't take my booked SFO flight home.

Nothing was said, nothing ever came of it. I guess if you repeatedly tried to abuse things, something might happen.

The airlines often just accept that people's plans change, they have an inflexible ticket, and can't take their booked flight.

Cheers,
Mike

Well, after quite a lot of poking around on the VS web site, I finally located the complete Conditions of Carriage, which is where such rules would normally be spelled out in detail:

http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/us/bo ... rriage.jsp

I'm happy to report that VS has no rule about throwaway ticketing listed there. (Most US carriers have quite specific rules on the subject in their Contracts of Carriage.) So it appears this will not be a problem.

Thanks Mike for confirming you've done this without problems.

One less thing to worry about. Now I can focus on anticipating a great journey.

Or, you book the ticket with intent of using the return for your next trip somewhere, why throw it away? This is what I usually do, I currently have multiple tickets outstanding with different carriers for this reason .

Originally posted by free101girl
Of all the bankrupt airlines, DL is in the worst shape.

I disagree.

Per the recently released Feb2006 Financials:
Feb 2006 Net Loss: $209m (vs. $267m Feb 2005 and $300m Jan 2006)
Reorg Items: $71m
Feb 2006 Loss excluding reorg: $138m (vs. $267 million Feb 2005 and $213m Jan 2006)
Feb 2006 Operating Loss: $71m (vs. $147m Jan 2006)

Feb 2006 Unrestricted Cash: $2.2 billion (Jan 2006 was $2.1 billion)
Feb 2006 Total Cash (including restricted): $3 billion (Jan 2006 was $2.8 billion)

With unrestricted cash on the rise and the operating loss almost cut in half from last month, DL is hardly in the worst position of all bankrupt airlines.

The real risks, are as you put it, a pilot strike. Likewise, the threatened Flight Attendant strike at Comair could pose serious problems with both DL and Comair. Our flight attendants union has approved a strike, but we do not yet know when/if a strike might happen.

DL Management has said the airline won't survive a 48 hour strike. They did not say the company would shut down within 48 hours- simply that the long term effects of such a strike would ultimately end the company.

To give you an idea of the costs of a strike. At Comair we're told that a 15 minute delay on an originator flight can cost the airline USD $30,000 by the end of the day. Due to overtime, passenger reaccomidation and effects to future flight schedules. Cancelled flghts obviously cost even more.

I'm certainly not trying to defend Delta. A lot of people at Comair are hoping they'll sell us because there is the general thinking that we're going to go down with a sinking ship. I'm simply trying to show evidence that Delta, although still sick, is getting better.

DL has told us that we will be permitted to exit ch11 protection before them, as our reorganization is approximately 70% complete. My intrepretation of that is that they may sell us when our reorganization is complete, but nobody knows.

Originally posted by webdes03

Originally posted by free101girl
Of all the bankrupt airlines, DL is in the worst shape.

I'm simply trying to show evidence that Delta, although still sick, is getting better.

I don't pretend to be an expert. You may be right. Indeed I hope you're right, because it would be terrible for so many people to lose their jobs.

(And of course on a personal, purely selfish level I'd hate to lose all my remaining Skymiles!)

I've heard some people suggesting DL's latest numbers are misleading and that things are truly dire at DL. I hope not.

We just found out they're pulling our Comair CVG service completely and giving us just 2 ASA ATL flights. That is going to suck. Our station has been one of the top in the nation for on-time, now they're giving us ATL that'll turn to crap. We're wondering what's going to happen to us as Comair employees... currently we're slated to continue working above and below wing for the ASA service.

I know I'm not planning on sticking around to see what happens.

DL has been struggling with the pilots union, but the financials they're publishing and we're seeing in internal memos suggest DL is getting healthier. Still sick of course. My personal opinon is that if they can get through the pilot issue without a strike, DL will survive and thirve, however if the polots do strike, I give the company a 6-12 months.

But in response to your initial question, a strike shouldn't instantly nullify your ticket. I doubt you'll see the company completely shut down immediately, afterall, a strike at DL will only hurt DL mainline service, you'll still have all of the codeshare and Delta Connection services operating (at least for a little while).