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I redeemed Virgin points for a flight on partner airline (non UK departure) flying in April. However this flight now appreaed to be cancelled as cash ticket is no longer on sale and the same flight this month are all marked as cancelled. Virgin has not cntacted me yet about the cencellation and I only just found this out when trying to buy additional tickets for the same flight.
In senario like this who would be responsible for rebooking? Do I contact Virgin or the partner airline directly?Which airline is it? Your rights are probably going to depend on this, as AF & KLM will fall under EU/UK regulations, but DL, AM etc will be as per local rules.
Virgin may be helpful but may also tell you to contact the airline directly.
Which airline is it? Your rights are probably going to depend on this, as AF & KLM will fall under EU/UK regulations, but DL, AM etc will be as per local rules.
Virgin may be helpful but may also tell you to contact the airline directly.
Flight is on Xiamen Airlines departing HKG.
I would call Virgin asap and see what they can offer. @JDB and others who may be familiar with the airline may be able to assist further.
Yes call asap, as chinese airlines have their own rules.
No luck with Virgin call center. They said there’s no indication on their system that the flight has been cancelled. However they mentioned that the ticket has not been confirmed by the partner airline and they will request confirmation again. I’m not sure what that means, I thought tickets are issued when the booking is made?
There are various stages that a ticket can go through in its life. This is because, using IATA’s Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP) clearing house approach, one IATA member airline could issue a ticket on another.
IATA members are issued BSP numbers, which are included in the first three digits of the ticket number. 006 is Delta’s, 932 is Virgin’s, 125 is BA’s etc. This is referred to as that airline’s “stock” – so, a flight booked on an 092-prefixed ticket is on VS’ stock.
An IATA member (eg an airline or a travel agent) who uses BSP can issue a ticket on another IATA member’s inventory. This starts by creating a blank Passenger Name Record, or PNR, and adding pertinent details about the trip to it. On most airlines, the PNR is exposed to you the traveller – it’s the six character confirmation number that you use to check in with.
The PNR is then sent from the member who is ticketing to the airline for ticketing. Tickets are only issued by the operating airline when fare information is included with the PNR, alongside the appropriate status code to confirm that payment has been made by the passenger. This, in short, create a record in BSP that the member booking owes the member operating. The clearing house manages this – it’s a huge system with lots of cash flowing through – and ends up creating single single invocids for BSP members covering all of their activity in a given period and then distributes proceeds to the members.
It sounds like VS created the PNR and may well have added fare details, but the operating airline didn’t confirm it and therefore – even if you’d turned up – it may not have been accepted for travel.
@focusonskill – does it actually save much to be booking this on points via Virgin, because having them in the middle, not really knowing the ins and outs of some of these partner airlines nor having any better communication channels than a passenger will complicate your trip at every stage.
Xiamen is fine to deal with as are most Chinese airlines – they just have very rigid ways of doing things.
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