Virgin Atlantic increases carrier charges £200 overnight!

[Mark]

I booked a flight yesterday UC for LHR > IAD with £500 in carrier charges. £800 total using an upgrade voucher.

Added a member of staff to the same flight today and charge has increased to £1000! a dummy booking shows the carrier imposed charge has gone up from £500 to £700 on upper class flights!

[Travel Strong]

Wtf, they were already more expensive than BA.
A 1 way booking I almost made last night, but left til today, has just gone up by £100+ also.

[Olly]

The reverse happened to me last month (down to £800 from £1000) – so it seems their approach is rather random as to which will apply

[NorthernLass]

If this is their response to BA’s new RFS pricing on long haul, they may find it backfiring on them …

[ankomonkey]

I held my nerve during Covid and kept my Virgin points. Maybe I should send them to Hilton after all!

[Olly]

I should add that when I noticed the drop in charges, I asked them to refund the difference which they refused. So I had to waste an hour cancelling and then rebooking the flights, and still waiting on their refunds team to process this properly (so far they’ve only refunded one of the two flights even though the cancellation was a month ago – their back-end teams really are useless, and the call centre staff are not able to do anything about it directly)

[Travel Strong]

Feel like this would be front page points world news if it was BA, but virgin has slipped it through unnoticed! My booking yesterday consumes every last virgin point – and I’ve built a healthy avios balance instead.

It is a shame, as I would prefer virgin (for their service on the flight and on the phone, and the LHR lounge, but they clearly have no interest in making points loyalty appealing anymore and I have no interest in paying extra £ for a coffin seat vs a BA club suite.

[Nath4n]

Goodness me you’re right. I’ve been looking at booking UC LAX return later this year, just been trying to finalise dates.

When I looked a couple of days ago it was £799 in taxes, it’s now £999!

135,000 miles plus a THOUSAND in taxes. Unless you’re using an upgrade / companion voucher the savings vs pure cash fares is slim.

Incredibly frustrating how these increases happen with no warning or lead-in time and I’m really struggling to find motivation to use my stash of Virgin miles.

[Ash]

Yes, it seems like Virgin redemptions are only good value in economy. We got LHR Cape town PE out and Econ back for £479 , a voucher and 35,000 points. Booked 2 months pre departure….ok value, but not stellar.

[ChasP]

I have been following to SFO they were £999 charges a couple of months ago then dropped to £799 now back up to £999
Perhaps following the prices on a Virgin sale offer ?

[NorthernLass]

This fills me with dismay as I was looking to move a fair bit of travel from BA to VS over the next few years. Might look to use my stash of Virgin points for cruises if that offer appears again!

[Ash]

The saving grace could be when Virgin joins Skyteam. Though doubt virgin vouchers could be redeemed with skyteam partners.

[Gary]

Thought to reflect on the numbers
LHR CPT in UC off peak return

Mar 21 115,000 points + 600 (= £1750 at 1p/pt)
Feb 23 115,000 points + 880 (= £2030 at 1p/pt)

Should one see it as a 16% (2030/1750）or 46% (880/600) increase (ie not unexpected given inflation/fuel… etc VS pretty unreasonable) on Virgin’s part?