Virgin Holidays

[byronlewis]

Hi everyone.

What’s the best way for me to go about booking a Virgin Atlantic holiday and then upgrading the flights using points and a 2 for 1 voucher? It’s for one person travelling. Am I able to call the same number you call about upgrading to book the entire holiday?

I want to sample upper class either 1 or both ways – is it a case of paying for a premium seat (as part of the holiday), and then subject to availability, me being able to upgrade those seats to Upper at the time of booking? I know VA don’t make it easy to spend this Voucher!!

Cheers

[AL]

Spending the voucher is straightforward – you just need availability. You can use it to upgrade by one cabin on:

– a return flight for one passenger
– one sector for two passengers
– one sector for one passenger and retain half of the voucher

The easiest way to do this is as follows:

1) Use https://travelplus.virginatlantic.com/reward-flight-finder to find Upper reward availability in your chosen cabin. For routes served by multiple flights per day, it won’t tell you which flight has availability, but VS can tell you that – call Flying Club and ask which flights on a given date on that route have space in G bucket. For routes served by one flight a day, this won’t apply.

2) Book your holiday with Virgin Holidays. Remember to give them your Flying Club number to earn extra tier points – 20 per £500 spent! I do this as the first thing in the conversation so I don’t forget as they won’t apply it after you’ve paid anything to them – it needs to be in advance of that. Assuming Holidays can ticket the flight (which they can do if it’s departing within the next 331 days), then you can proceed to step 3.

3) Call Flying Club, and give them the PNR that Holidays gave you. Ask upgrade to G. Let them price it and process it for you.

If you go in to a Holidays branch, they might even (read: very likely will!) let you use their phone to do it all in one go…

Holidays can’t do anything with your voucher but what they can do – especially if you go in store and ask nicely – is price up different buckets for you so that you save as much cash on the original ticket as you can. If you want to get in to Upper, you’ll need to be in Premium – but you can be in any Premium bucket (W, S, H or K are the revenue Premium buckets). Taxes should be about £600 return or so. Unlike BA, you can use half a voucher – so if you find availability only on one leg, you can use half a voucher and leave the other half for another time, or keep checking during the trip and call to use the remainder before departure.

Upper has three configurations, so do compare the coffins on the 787s and A330s with the suites on the A350s and A339s. The two suite combinations are ever so slightly different, but if it’s your first time in Upper, not noticeable. Popular routes such as LAX get multiple flights per day, each serviced by different aircraft types, so you can choose the flight that matches your need. And, if you use the full voucher, you can mix and match to try two styles.

Shout if you have other questions! I’d love to make spending that voucher easy for you 🙂

[byronlewis]

Hi thanks for the very detailed reply!

I did have a look at flights to Barbados for January but alas there are no UC seats available on the dates I wanted…do you think some will open up later on? It would be a return for one passenger. There’s only 1 date showing later in January at the moment.

Also just to check, if I do manage to get the upgrade to UC from Premium, do I get access to the Clubhouse at LHR? Even though I originally book in Premium?

Thanks again for the advice! If I don’t get Barbados, Miami is looking like a second choice.

[AL]

More might, but they might not. Revenue management effectively decides that – if there’s a while to go until the flight departs, then I would imagine that they will not add any more seats (but, someone might cancel) until very close to, or even during, OLCI. Caribbean dates, being leisure routes, get snapped up quickly! SeatSpy can help alert you when seats open, but when that alert comes through, you need to be dialling there and then to stand a chance!

A ticket in Upper, for the purposes of ground operations, is a ticket in Upper – you’ll get all of the Upper perks at https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/upper-class-cabin-and-seats.html. The only thing you won’t get is additional Virgin Points and tier points – you only get (unless VS IT has a wobbly day, which is less often then BA but not unheard of!) what you’ve paid for (i.e. Premium in this case).

[byronlewis]

Just an update, I have now sorted a holiday in Barbados in January – I’ve done the flight and hotel separately, with the flight costing just the taxes of £800 plus 55000 miles plus my upgrade voucher. This was for an Upper Class return on the A350. All done in a matter of minutes over the phone by a helpful member of staff – they even held the seat for 72 hours over the weekend so I could firm up my plans. Very impressed – I even picked my seat over the phone and then they also told me i’d earnt another voucher so even better!!

[AL]

byronlewis wrote:

Just an update, I have now sorted a holiday in Barbados in January – I’ve done the flight and hotel separately, with the flight costing just the taxes of £800 plus 55000 miles plus my upgrade voucher. This was for an Upper Class return on the A350. All done in a matter of minutes over the phone by a helpful member of staff – they even held the seat for 72 hours over the weekend so I could firm up my plans. Very impressed – I even picked my seat over the phone and then they also told me i’d earnt another voucher so even better!!

Good work! Enjoy Barbados! Shout if you have any questions in the meantime 🙂