Virgin redemptions taken before 331 day cutoff?

[marks7389]

Hi All,

Booked an outbound to Grenada in UC for New Year’s Eve yesterday – a bit earlier than we’d planned, but to take advantage of the status match offer… I’m now planning a strategy for booking the return flight. I looked at the Reward Seat Checker and noticed that it is showing availability on some services up to 336 days, but at less than the minimum guaranteed seat release levels (often with no UC/Premium at all).

It looks like there’s a route to booking redemption seats ahead of the 331 days, even though you can’t do so online. I know flights can be booked earlier through Virgin Holidays, so wondering if it is that. So far as I’m aware it’s not possible to book a holiday with straight redemption flights, but maybe upgrades with Points are possible…?

Anyone have any ideas as to what is happening, and whether the availability showing between 331 and 336 days out is an accurate reflection?

[AL]

Automatically, at about 5am each morning, any flight that hasn’t been previously released within T+331 gets added to inventory, where the checker picks up from. Some people are hot off the line, and will actively look for redemption seats at that point. I suspect (but I am not going to guarantee it!) that if you waited until a T+336 becomes a T+331 (i.e. in five days), you’d see reward inventory open up.

Virgin Holidays will not book a redemption seat for you, but they will book a revenue seat in a given bucket from which you can then upgrade by calling Flying Club. If you get someone very nice at Hols, they’ll even make you a coffee whilst you use their phone!

[marks7389]

Thanks AL. Was planning to call at 5am (!). Do you know if VH customers have to wait until T-331 to upgrade a revenue seat, or is there a route by which they can potentially get in early? Seems odd that the redemption checker shows availability up to 336 days out….

[AL]

Hols customers have to wait until availability appears – there’s no additional perks for upgrading through Hols. In fact, it is arguably a reduction in perks, if the revenue fare is reasonable, given you earn TPs on Hols spend.

VS IT is sometimes ‘interesting’. Does VS give you the same results?

[marks7389]

The reward checker seems to align with the booking engine for the 5th January (the latest bookable date as of today). As an example Miami-London is showing only 3 economy seats and Barbados-London only 8 economy seats across two flights so if there were really UC and Premium seats available at 5am this morning they’re certainly going very quickly. If I can rouse myself at 5am tomorrow I may try an experiment to see if they are releasing the minimum guarantee regardless of what the reward checker shows before-hand.

[AL]

I would have checked EF for you, but VS data has long since disappeared from it, meaning the best shot is to try at 5am (as annoying as that is).

[marks7389]

I looked on EF to check the seats taken (in Premium and UC at least) on some flights for the 5th Jan. It does show that there are seats booked – almost certainly redemptions at this point. So I think that confirms the minimum release guarantee is being met.

Also seems to confirm that bookings outside of the window are not possible by there being no seat maps available – so I think the availability showing beyond 331 days in the reward checker probably is anomalous/incomplete.

Will report back after I’ve checked at 5am 🙂

[Guernsey Globetrotter]

I checked on Seat Spy and some routes (e.g. MAN-JFK, LHR-ATL) are showing reward availability on Jan 5th but most are not, suggesting that as you hypothesise they are getting snapped up. Good luck with the early morning call tomorrow!!

[marks7389]

Tomorrow morning is for research/strategy purposes :-). My working theory is that Virgin preloads additional availability over the minimum guaranteed seat release (basically nothing for flights back from the Caribbean in early January, particularly in Premium/UC but is there on select days for other services), and that’s what the checker is showing for T-331 to T-336.

We’ll see… Comparing what is showing tonight for 6th Jan with what is there on the dot of 5am tomorrow may prove or disprove that theory.

[marks7389]

So, the results are… I’ve come to the conclusion that the availability showing between T-331 to T-336 is just nonsense.

As an example, MIA-LHR for 6th Jan was showing, across the two flights and three classes (UC/Premium/Economy):

* 2/9+/9+ at 18:50 yesterday evening
* 2/2/8 at 00:45 this morning
* 4/4/9+ at 05:04 this morning

By 05:46, the two UC seats on one of the two flights had been taken; the others (2/4/9+) were still bookable at that point.

But there are not many people up and booking flights from the Caribbean at 5am. SVD-LHR for 6th Jan was still showing the full minimum release available at 6am. By 10am, both Premium and one of the UC seats were gone, as were both of the UC and Premium seats on the other BGI-LHR flight.

If you want redemption seats at T-331 on those gold dust flights, particularly in the premium cabins, it is definitely worth getting up early!