Virgin Overbooking

I am travelling PE to Las Vegas in 2 weeks time and have been watching the seat map fill up over the past couple of weeks and there are now no seats left in PE on the seat map, however you can still buy a rtn for £649 with Miles and Money.

Is there an explanation for this?

Thanks

[preiffer]

Yup - the explanation is in the title you wrote - "overbooking"

Also bear in mind that SOME PE seats are only released at check-in, so the seatmap won't always show the true number of unallocated seats. However, it is normal for airlines to sell more seats than they have to maximise revenue.


Welcome to the site, too [y]

[Decker]

Welcome to the forum!

Yes ALL airlines oversell to make up for the "no-shows". Like on last night's VS10 there were 45 Upper Class seats available and 47 sold.

[fozzyo]

Not all the seats are released for pre-selection. So while the seatmap is full their could well be empty seats. if you are concerned about over-booking the safest bet is to use the OLCI (Online Checkin) facility to confirm your seat early on. Or if you can't get on the Interweb just make sure you get to the airport with plenty of time to spare.

Mat

I always use OLCI and then twilight check in (if poss) to make absolutely sure. I'd hate to have paid all that money for a UC seat only to be told it was full. What would they do? Downgrade you? [:(!]

Only 60% of the a/c seats are abel to be selected online.

[Decker]

Originally posted by Virgin Sheep
What would they do? Downgrade you? [:(!]

It has been known

http://www.britflyer.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10086

This is down to the fact that only a certain % of seats (normally 60%) are released for allocation prior to check-in. You are all correct to say that we (and all other scheduled carriers) do overbook to offser 'no shows' however the overbook level is much less on leisure routes such as MCO, LAS, BGI etc than it is on JFK, JNB, HKG and similar business routes. In fact, both J and W are only booked to capacity on LAS flights this month while Y is only overbooked by a maximum of 3 seats!!!

In fact, not all airlines overbook - Jetblue doesn't AFAIK. If you've booked the seat, then it's yours.

VS.

I appreciate that 'most' airlines do overbook but on leisure routes surely the majority of people are going on 'holiday' and normally show for their flight?

I appreciate that 'most' airlines do overbook but on leisure routes surely the majority of people are going on 'holiday' and normally show for their flight?

JNB has one of the highest no-show rates, but I wouldn't have thought it would have as high a business travel ratio as NY etc.

VS.

[fozzyo]

You'd be surprised. On our recent flight we had two people who even checked in, checked baggage and then just didn't bother going to the plane! So we had to wait while their bags were taken off.

As the airport process is more familair to people now through the advent of shows like Airport and Airine, people think overbooking/downgradind/denied boarding happens more often than it does as these 'exciting' bits are shown in the programmes

I've been at check in with a Lagos flight oversold by 100+ (yes! that much!) and it's gone with spare seats.

I've also travelled stand by on an SFO which was 60 over and got on.

95% of the time it works it self out - but if VS don't think it's gonna happen they ask for volunteers!

You should never worry about overbooking!

NEarly every airline does it- they would be silly not to really especially considering the figures that lipstick mentioned.

Everytime I have flown SQ to SIN I have nearly always been offered a very tempting deal- normally if flying Y they will put you on the later flight, upgrade you to raffles class and give you something like £200 for the inconvience caused. All this for staying at LHR for an extra 8 hours. I have come to the conclusion that they must really overbook and find it hard to tempt people off the flight!

Overbooking causes chaos over Christmas time. Airlines, VS included, continue to overbook at a time when they know pax are desperate to fly out.

It was a while ago but VS were offerring Y pax on the early LAX flight to move to the late LAX flight and offer than a return Y ticket any where that VS fly to (this was before SYD). As we had connecting flights, we did not want to take up this offer. Then check-in staff found that there were insufficient pax taking up this offer and were compulsorily transferring pax to the later flight.

While the check-in agent were dealing with us (sending a message to AA indicating that we would be miss our connecting flight and getting us on to a later AA flight), a female supervisor screamed out in frustration - who overlooked those 10 seats in UC!

The guy dealing with us turned around, sighed and checked us into UC seats instead. We were smiling and the poor check-in agent just looked tired. Looks like VS gave out a few too many comps that moring. This was our first ever Op-up on VS.

Most LGW flights are only allowed to overbook by 2 or 3 seats. Remember there are people coming in on early morning domestic connections; more often than not at least one party miss a flight due to late arrival of their domestic flight. There is also passenger illness, passport problems - you'd be surprised. 3 seats means the overbook limit is less than 1%, when you think of all the things that can go wrong on the way to the airport I'm actually surprised it's not slightly higher!