Multi-city Virgin / Delta question

[bennymoon]

Hi all,

Today I booked a multi city trip through VS with the following itinerary.

LHR-SFO (VS operated & marketed, Premium)
SFO-SLC (DL operated & marketed, Delta Comfort +)
SLC-LHR (DL operated / VS marketed, Delta Premium Select)

I had to book this trip through the Virgin call centre, firstly because I wanted to use my credit card voucher to upgrade the LHR-SFO flight, but also because I wanted to put the spend on the Virgin card to get the triple points.

Everything was fine until I went to seat selection. I could chose seats for the first two flights without any issue on Virgin’s site but the SLC-LHR route showed no seat availability. I tried then to do it on Delta’s site where the only seats I could see that I could select were Comfort+. When I selected one, it said I had paid for Premium and should choose one of those, but all were blocked off.

I eventually called Delta and 45 mins later they had managed to put me in my chosen Premium seats but the agent had to get a technical support person on the phone and said that because it was different ticket stock that caused an issue. Has anyone encountered this before? I came out of the call feeling like there was a mistake somewhere in the process.

[AL]

When Delta referred to different ticket stock, they were probably referring to the fact that the ticket is on 932 and not 006 stock, which would be uncommon for them (but still entirely correct).

This sounds to me more that they had blocked seating on SLC-LHR, and needed to open some more up for you to be able to choose, rather than a mistake in the process.

[bennymoon]

Thanks @AL! I knew about ticket stock types from previous questions. It was more just the fact that Delta’s version of Economy Delight was showing and then saying I’d paid for something else. All the standard economy seats were blocked off too which made it even more odd if it thought I was in the wrong cabin. Another Delta agent I spoke to also thought because I was in K class that I was in Economy but it turns out K class with VS maps to something different with DL.

[AL]

The fare class mapping is at https://pro.delta.com/content/agency/us/en/orphan-page/class-mapping—virgin-atlantic.html, so you have a reference for future. DL agents get confused enough with Economy Delight as it is (and so much so that they suspended ticketing it on 006 stock), so it doesn’t surprise me that you got different answers from different people, despite that really not being something that should happen.