Virgin Atlantic to introduce fees for ‘preferred’ economy seating

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• Baji Nahid says:

  4 Mar4 March 03:53

  This just sounds soo confusing, what’s the point in having one segment of economy ticket holders pay?, most folk in the bucket fares wouldn’t really mind where they are sitting/allocated.

  They should have either made all economy passengers pay like BA does, or introduce what ANZ (Air New Zealand) and other airlines have done by bring out blocked seating, or even something like a sky couch/bed like ANZ has?

  • Rob says:

    4 Mar4 March 09:55

    To be honest, when I first heard about this I was assuming they had scrapped Delight and were letting Classic customers pay for the Delight seats. What is odd is that the ‘preferred’ seats still exclude the Delight seats, so the ‘preferred’ seats are not the best ones.

• ChrisC says:

  4 Mar4 March 04:08

  OMG it’s the end of the world!

  It’s not like BA charges for seats is it if you want specific seats????

  • DT says:

    4 Mar4 March 05:38

    I don’t read anywhere in the time of the article that suggests anyone thinks it’s the end of the world. It says multiple times that you don’t have to pay if you don’t want to and that nobody needs to be financially worse off

    • DT says:

      4 Mar4 March 05:38

      Tone of the article*

• Richard B says:

  4 Mar4 March 05:36

  And the relative value of Delight to Classic widens further..

  • Jonathan says:

    4 Mar4 March 06:32

    The amount of extra (now) Virgin Points you earn from an economy delight booking vs. economy classic always made delight the best choice, based on delight coating roughly £100 more than classic

    • kitten says:

      4 Mar4 March 12:40

      + Boost?

• Jon says:

  4 Mar4 March 05:57

  This got me thinking… I suppose this (industry-wide) trend towards paid-for extras, and myriad fare classes with various stuff included or excluded, is the inevitable result of everyone (understandably) trying to keep their headline fares as low as possible – competition, market forces etc.

  What if we went the other way, and airlines were required (I assume it would have to be by law, as it’s one of those ‘everyone or no-one’ things) to make their headline fares ‘all in’, but then offer discounts for removing things you don’t want?

  I wonder how many people would actually remove enough stuff to get down to the cheapest fares we have today? Might the airlines actually make more money this way?

  And might it help reset our perceptions and expectations of the true cost/value of air travel? Would it really hurt if air travel were to become a little more expensive / less of a race to the bottom?

  Just a thought 😉

  • memesweeper says:

    4 Mar4 March 08:49

    Airlines used to make plenty of money with all-in fares. The LCCs came along and ruined it for everyone.

    Allowing airlines to advertise fares that exclude any luggage other than the “handbag” allowance seems to me to be misleading and/or dishonest. Seat selection fees don’t concern me — unlike luggage, I’m sure most passengers opt not to pay for it.

    • Peggerz says:

      4 Mar4 March 11:55

      “ Airlines used to make plenty of money with all-in fares. The LCCs came along and ruined it for everyone.”
      I accept you are writing in the context of add-on’s/luxuries/whetever had been accepted etc etc here, but the LCC’s have been fantastic as far as I’m concerned.
      Until EasyJet, Jet2, Ryanair etc came along and started ops from EDI I had the option of KLM to AMS or Aer Lingus to DUB and not much else. BA claimed it was uneconomic to fly from ‘the regions’ and we all had to funnel through LHR/LGW.
      I thereafter had the options to go all over Europe directly at substantially lower costs – great with a young family. This then encouraged several daily flights to the USA, Qatar, UAE, Turkey etc with BA still not playing ball.
      So the LCC’s maybe ruined some aspects of flights for some, but opened up the world for some others.

      • memesweeper says:

        4 Mar4 March 13:54

        There’s lots to like about LCC’s — and point-to-point in airports that hub/spoke airlines ignore is a very good thing.

        But excluding required items for travel from the fare — like families being sat together, and a small luggage allowance — is getting beyond a joke. Sadly I think regulation might be the only answer otherwise every airline is required to offer a service as bad as Michael O’Leary’s just to compete.

    • kitten says:

      4 Mar4 March 12:44

      +1 memesweeper I find it offensive an airline can pretend you can travel longhaul with just a handbag or even a small bag. Perhaps the odd trust fund babe can do it skipping between homes but not the rest of us.

  • Dubious says:

    4 Mar4 March 16:01

    Surely this would just incentivise airlines to cut those services entirely from their offerings?
    If offering these things presents a ‘cost’ to the airline then they’ll just do away with them entirely,

• Andrew says:

  4 Mar4 March 06:19

  I was able to select an Exit row free of charge as an Economy Light passenger with my new Gold card (matched from BA) so the wording of Economy Classic when referring to Gold benefits seems to be just differentiating between classic seats and Delight seats (which I couldn’t book). I also got a free checked bag (unlike BA who still don’t give you a free bag as silver/gold on a HBO fare) so its an Economy Classic for the price of Light for Golds (and Clubhouse/Revivals access) which seems great value.

• lumma says:

  4 Mar4 March 06:47

  Looking at the seat map examples, the A330-200 has only 8 ok seats you can choose for free if travelling solo in economy classic, once these are taken, you’re stuck with either accepting a middle seat or paying an extra £30 each way. Doesn’t sound very good to me.

  • C says:

    4 Mar4 March 08:22

    The US Airlines have used this model for a number of years. In my experience, if the non-preferred seats are booked full, the lower category ticket holders will be rolled forward at check in (some airlines even make the preferred seats freely available from T-24). In these circumstances it may ctually make sense to check in later, to increase the likelihood of preferred seats being opened.

    IME, an airline’s definition of ‘preferred’ seats may also vary from mine, for example emphasising location in the aircraft (i may not place so much value on sitting in the front of the cabin).

  • NKP says:

    4 Mar4 March 08:34

    My understanding that those pictures don’t represent the entire economy seating section. So there would be more available ‘free’ seating further back in the cabin that’s not shown in the example images.

  • Rhys says:

    4 Mar4 March 09:03

    The photos don’t depict the whole economy cabin, just the front rows.

• Alex Sm says:

  4 Mar4 March 09:09

  Strictly speaking, the paying Economy Light passengers will be 33% worse off… yes, they don’t have to pay but still. Maybe worth mentioning in the article otherwise too rosy

• r* says:

  4 Mar4 March 09:33

  Making the seats that are a block of 2 rather than 3 as pay-only seats is pretty scummy and reflects badly on them imo. Have they just taken execs from ryanair or something?

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