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I have a booking to LAX in October, preCOVID booking, 55k rewards + upgrade voucher and £550 – cash price at the time was £3k. Flights were cancelled by Virgin and I was told on chat that there was no reward spaces for October but after I pointed out they had cancelled my original booking they allowed me to choose from any flight that was available for cash. So all well and good
Today I was looking at hotels car hire etc and just out of curiosity I looked at Virgin flights – of course there are no reward seats available but cash UC prices are now over £7.5k !
Now I understand that airlines have dynamic pricing based on demand but has anyone at Virgin ever though about buying seats back ?
I would quite happily sell my seat back to them for say £4k and they could resell it making them £3.5k profitIt doesn’t work like that.
Instead of one seat to sell they’d then have two and no guarantee they’d sell either of them.
As you approach the date of a flight the interest of an airline is to sell any remaining places as expensive as they can. They are after all about to realise the full cost of running the service so any new passengers can be charged high fares as they have no other option at that point.
The high price you see does not represent the value of the ticket you hold but that of the person that now needs to do a trip in October.
you both missed the point if the algorithms that the airlines use are so good (and remember we are still 50 days out from the flight date) then they should have a fair degree of confidence (?95%?) that they can resell at a higher price.
Or view it an extension of the old idea of booking extra seats and asking people to volunteer to be bumped
My guess is a lot of over 65 (like me) reward passengers could be bought and they are not risking that much as I said I only paid £500 and 55k rewards esp if they made me an offer as a sort of option eg pay me £500 now and an extra £2.5k if they resell it
Pay someone £25k a year to email/telephone 50 likely prospects a day – if they persuade one a week ie 50 people a year and they resell 3/4 of those seats it will make money if they persuade one a day (out of 50) then it could make a £million.
How many will of course depend on the notice given – as I said I’m almost 50 days out – I would be a lot less keen at the checkin deskAirlines already do this. It is called overbooking. They can continue to sell tickets, now at very high prices and “buy you out” closer to take off and simply pay the EU261 compensation (putting you on the next flight is free for them).
Pay someone £25k a year to email/telephone 50 likely prospects a day – if they persuade one a week ie 50 people a year and they resell 3/4 of those seats it will make money if they persuade one a day (out of 50) then it could make a £million.
How many will of course depend on the notice given – as I said I’m almost 50 days out – I would be a lot less keen at the checkin deskWell, that’s one way to really annoy premium customers. Cold call them or pester with emails to change a booking for the airline’s convenience.
Airlines already do this. It is called overbooking. They can continue to sell tickets, now at very high prices and “buy you out” closer to take off and simply pay the EU261 compensation (putting you on the next flight is free for them).
Virgin used to have someone walk the queue at check-in for overbooked flights and look for volunteers to wait a day to leave — my friends who took the offer seemed to get a deal better than the EU261.
I was in the US a few weeks ago and overheard a Southwest member of staff offering $200 for someone to be bumped to a flight 90 mins later. There were plenty of takers
Airlines already do this. It is called overbooking. They can continue to sell tickets, now at very high prices and “buy you out” closer to take off and simply pay the EU261 compensation (putting you on the next flight is free for them).
Virgin used to have someone walk the queue at check-in for overbooked flights and look for volunteers to wait a day to leave — my friends who took the offer seemed to get a deal better than the EU261.
We were offered this once when checking in for a Virgin flight from Boston back to the UK back in 2001/2 (so pre EU261 I think). To travel the following day they offered us overnight accommodation in Boston and 2 free flights anywhere on Virgin’s network valid for 1 year (can’t remember if they threw in some points too). We took the offer but the problem was we had to wait land-side until everyone had checked in the see if the flight was actually going to be full – unfortunately there were some no-shows so we travelled as booked.
BA Club JFK-LHR, particularly on a Friday evening, was regularly overbooked so they used to offer decent hotel, dinner and flight back on Concorde the next day which made getting volunteers quite easy.
Apparently AA have ordered some supersonic aircraft which will be ready in 2029! I wonder if there will be any award availability ….
I remember being touted in the checkin line 15 years ago to volunteer as they had overbooked but in the end the extra people didnt turn up
Thought those days were passed but guess I’ll find out next month !
Might be an interesting thread to see how often it happens these days
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