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Morning all
In past years (Pre Covid) I typically had little issue in obtaining reward seats on Virgin in UC. This was probably due to the seats appeared to be loaded around 5:00 – 7:00am. I was at work by then, so making a call was easy.
I am now on the look-out for reward seats again. I have an account with seat spy and I got my first alert at 1:00am this morning UK time for the outbound flight.
Is this the new norm for reward seats being loaded, if so, what is the criteria being used to load said flights other than the 330/331 day rule.
When should I expect the return leg to be loaded?
Officially, T-331 at midnight Eastern (so, 0400 or 0500 in the UK, depending on time zone). I’m yet to see this not met.
Don’t rely on SeatSpy. I had an alert for NAS-LHR recently, got the email 36 hours after I had actually booked the seats I wanted! There’s a longish thread in this section about booking at 5 am.
Officially, T-331 at midnight Eastern (so, 0400 or 0500 in the UK, depending on time zone). I’m yet to see this not met.
Hi @AL
I would have always agreed with you in past times and to be honest I still do agree with you, so why did the Virgin system have seat availability at 1:00 am UK time. Perhaps a glitch?
Officially, T-331 at midnight Eastern (so, 0400 or 0500 in the UK, depending on time zone). I’m yet to see this not met.
Hi @AL
I would have always agreed with you in past times and to be honest I still do agree with you, so why did the Virgin system have seat availability at 1:00 am UK time. Perhaps a glitch?
There is no guarantee that Air4 and/or Deltamatic did have availability. What’s to say that SeatSpy didn’t show you inventory from the day before erroneously? The way to check would have been to see what Reward Seat Checker had at the same time as the SeatSpy alert came in. There is a chance that they’re moving things around to coincide with midnight GMT, but given how many other VS processes are heavily reliant on Air4/Deltamatic’s default processes, I’m going to assume that isn’t happening.
As I said, SeatSpy is not reliable, especially when it comes to VS. I’ve noticed weeks worth of award seats not showing some months, when it’s been possible to book via the VS app.
I canned my EF subscription when it became unreliable and anecdotal reports from here and other places haven’t convinced me that SeatSpy is worth the cash.
I canned my EF subscription when it became unreliable and anecdotal reports from here and other places haven’t convinced me that SeatSpy is worth the cash.
SeatSpy has indeed became fairly useless, at least for BA, but I still find ExpertFlyer by far the most useful air travel aid that is well worth the subscription.
Hi @AL, @JDB, @NorthernLass
Seat Spy appears to be struggling at the moment.
I require seats returning from USA for the 30th April 2025, Seat Spy has just posted availability for 28th April 2025.
I have just spoken with VA UC who have informed me that 28th April seats were loaded yesterday and 29th April seats are already loaded and have been purchased.
So, for clarity is it 5:00 or 7:00am to get onto Virgin?
The consensus on here seems to be that it’s 5 am just now (this might change when we revert to GMT). As I said before, there are threads in the VS section discussing this.
You can see from the Virgin website and app when the seats are available; SeatSpy is always going to be behind, the only question is by how much!
@JDB Yes, I agree that EF is very useful for all the other features, but I realised I wasn’t using half of those (admittedly, top tier on BA and VS meant it was very easy to pick up the phone and make it someone else’s problem…), so canned it. Might re-sub, but that wouldn’t be for the inventory checking.
@FREEFLIGHTS The only two things that VS will ever stick by re: availability is what is available in their own ticketing system, and what is available at https://travelplus.virginatlantic.com/reward-flight-finder. Where there are discrepancies, the former takes precedence over the latter. 5am is the magic number (it’s basically midnight Atlanta in whatever time zone the UK happens to be in, as @NorthernLass points out). So, you need to be on the blower to VS at 5am tomorrow morning, especially if it’s a super popular route.Reward seats booked, many thanks to everybody.
\o/
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