Using miles whinge

Its not snobbery rather the opposite. I think teh way that airlines treat economy passengers is truly awful.
When I started flying, Virgin were No1 for economy, they were miles above the charter airlines out there and were known for their superb economy experiance.
However, they have devalued the product so much that it is not on a par and in some cases below the charters.
31' seat pitch is not good, its appauling (all airlines with this pitch are appauling) but as they have gone for reduction in costs, the Easyjet experiance, they think that its OK.

Of course V-Port ife is excellent, but many passengers never see this, instead have the very poor today Nova, which is no-where near the likes of Thomas Cook etc.

What i woudl like to see is 33' pitch as standard, as some charters now have, but I cannot even see Virgin doing that with the A380!

Virgin has changed since its inception form a 'now2 airline to a 'smae' airline, with the bean counters in charge and on many sites people saying that virgin flights are not even as good as TCD!

AlanA - apologies if the snobbery comment felt like it was directed at you, I can assure you it wasn't. What I meant was that from my experiences I have encountered a degree of snobbishness towards economy from some of those fortunate enough to fly business class (usually the ones who have never flown econ themselves) and sections of the travel press who portray it as some sort of cattle wagon. Whilst it's not exactly the last word in luxury I think there are improvements to be seen over time, PTVs, AVOD, more comfortable chairs and lighter, more airy cabins. With the onset of the 'next generation' of seating (see Cathay Pacific's non-reclining seat back) and aircraft like the 380 and 787, I think economy will be a more bearable place to be in future.
You are right about leg room though, Air NZ win this hands down as the extra few inches makes soooo much difference!

As an Economy regular, I would still choose VS over most of the other airlines for sitting at the back, the exception so far is SQ(Haven't tried Air NZ).

However, my philosophy is you get what you pay for and if I get more, it's a bonus!.

In the end, VS gets their money from UC and cargo, not from cattle class.

Alan

Maybe a quick suggestion if you're happy to connect. We're off to MCO in october and there was no way we could get seven UC reward seats. So I played around and found eight on the IAD flight and eight on the daytime EWR flight. So we booked them.

Now Jetblue have just released their October schedule so with a four hour layover in IAD and 36inches of room for the internal flights (all for $69 IAD-MCO and $79 MCO-EWR) Now we have to stay overnight in EWR but for seven UC seats and the service on B6 is supposed to be great, plus you can select your seats even for the cheap fares. I'm really looking forward to it.

Added advantage if you look at how reliable the MCO direct route is, you could end up getting in about the same time as the LGW flight.

I also feel that the critisism of Y is a bit harsh. Sure you don't get the service of the higher cabins but then you don't expect it either. If you want the lowest price available then you have to expect a service to match.

We flew MCO at Christmas / NY on 4 reward Y tickets and never had cause for complaint. I had been looking to upgrade to PE but there was predictably no availability - indeed we were lucky to get the Ys. Service was wonderfully average and while staff were not exactly bending over backwards for us, they were helpful, polite and did actually smile ocassionally. Sure the seats were cramped, especially when the seat in front went all the way back, but hey - we expected it and it didn't bother the kids. I am 6 feet (1.83 metres) and an extra bit of legroom would have been welcome but I've had worse - certainly had no trouble walking later. Indeed some seats in PE are worse now that they fit those IE boxes under the seats.

One thing that does get me in this discussion though is the idea that VS is not going to 'give seats away free if they can sell them'. Seats that are 'bought' with miles are not free - hopefully VS realise this. This is no excuse for miles seats not to be available on every flight in proportion to the number of miles earnt on each flight. Guessing that 25% of passengers are earning miles on a flight and that the miles earnt represent about 1/3 of an everage reward flight - and factoring in non-flight earnt miles and unredeemed or expiring miles - I reckon that around 10% of seats on all flights should be available for mileage redemption. On a LGW aircraft this represents around 2 in UC, 4-6 in PE and about 20 in Y, obviously sometimes additional seats may be released. Generally I beleieve that VS do make seats available on most if not all flights but certainly there should be no total blackout dates. Maybe VS could offer additional seats on these flights at a premium rate to reflect the peak period but if they do this then they need to offer premium earning rates on the same flights.

FM

[Scrooge]

Having flown in all classes I can say honestly, Y doesn't suck, it's just not good, the seat pitch being the big thing. This debate has gone on time and again, IMHO I don't see anything changing anytime soon, at least when it comes to Y and in many ways UC VS are living on their past, in time this will come back to bite them in their butt.

Anyways, to bring this back on topic...Alan please let us know how this works out.

With only 14 UC seats on a LGW/MAN flight you can, perhaps, understand why you face a snowball's chance in hell of picking a reward up.

There appear to be lots of other routes out there with masses of Gs; JFK/EWR, LAX, MIA - we've just managed four Gs and a Z to MIA (and the Z was only 'cause we ran out of miles). £12K worth of flights for a shade under 3500 quid. And we get the chance to do a bit of South Florida before driving up for a rendez-vous with The Mouse. Mustn't grumble.