[AL]

NorthernLass wrote:

am actually on VS metal in UC in April, so won’t have to quibble!

Oh, don’t be so sure – I’m LT Gold on VS, and have had to quibble a few times, even in Upper.

NorthernLass wrote:

Boarding a Ryanair flight a couple of years ago they wouldn’t let us bring coffee on due to “health and safety”. Then proceeded to sell coffee and other hot beverages, of course.

Skytanking, when acting as handlers, are notorious for this crap.

[AL]

The lounge dragons at MAN are regularly wrong. They base their lives on the operating airline, irrespective of anything else. KL doesn’t pay for 1903, yet VS does. They have a red folder behind the desk that, if you can convince them to get it out, will explain the actual rules to them. In your case, you could have used the 1903 lounge, but I appreciate you don’t want the hassle with the desk staff.

But most of the time, there’s a queue, and it isn’t worth the hassle. And, frankly, 1903’s not too brilliant anyway, at the end of the day. I now skip lounges at MAN, and am straight – via Pot Kettle Black – on to the aircraft. Often with the coffee, much to the chagrin of the idiots at Skytanking who try to stop me boarding with a drink I have bought in the terminal for no other reason than “you didn’t buy it from KLM”.

[AL]

This sounds very much like the agent made a mistake, as the charge should just be £70, per the terms. You don’t need to “kick off” – try calling again, and seeing if another agent processes it without that. Alternatively, or if you get the same answer multiple times, try making representation by email to customer.care@fly.virgin.com.

[AL]

frequentishflyer wrote:

Not too sure when flying from other airports but I have frequently upgraded with points at the airport via the help desk to the left of the check in area – they can’t do it at the check in area itself.

I haven’t used a voucher this way nor have I done it since the new adaptive pricing was added but please report back if it’s cheaper!

At LHR only, you can use the ticketing desk to pay points. You can’t at the outposts (including MAN). I’ve done it twice, and it’s generally been about 0.85/0.9p value, which isn’t a bad last minute use.

[AL]

I have, on very sparse occasion, had friendliness from the DL Sky Club at A8 (and A8, specifically – not the one at B32).
The VS Clubhouse used to be on PP, but I don’t recall seeing signage there over my few visits these past few weeks, so it may have stopped.
If you have a suitable Mastercard which gives you access to LoungKey, then Chase’s lounge is included and might be worth a look.

The one opposite where the new-ish Starbucks and McDonald’s are, near the A gates, is dire – don’t bother. Literally just prop up the bar at The Palm at that point.

[AL]

Panda Mick wrote:

I flew back from Vegas on a Econ Delight ticket booked with cash (50 TPs) upgraded to upper using my Virgin Credit Card Voucher

The flight dropped into my activity overnight and I’ve earned 100 TPs for the flight

My understanding now, and before the flight was that I’d earn the TPs for the cabin travelled in

But, the T&Cs above seem to contradict that

You are meant to earn the TPs in the original cabin. I wouldn’t mention that their IT played in your favour – I, accidentally, once did (by proxy, when asking about something else), and quickly learned the hard way!

[AL]

Good work! To me, the historical points history is most useful (it took me a second on Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/138.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 to find the hint showing that I click each cabin to find historical pricing.

One thing that will always be a challenge, if/until there is some form of real-time update from Deltamatic or a GDS, is that the true value may be different from the published one – which is, frankly, annoying, but out of anyone’s hands.

[AL]

Write to them at customer.care@fly.virgin.com, including the PNR in your email. 21.3(b) of the Conditions of Carriage, at https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/content/dam/conditions-of-carriage/Revision%2055%20(21-Jul-2025).pdf, applies:

Where your flight that is operated by us is cancelled or delayed by at least five hours, you may choose between:
(i) travelling as soon as possible on another of our scheduled flights. Travel is subject to availability of seats in the same class of service for which you originally purchased your Ticket;

(ii) travelling at a later date that is convenient to you on another of our scheduled flights. Travel is subject to availability of seats in the same class of service for which you originally purchased your Ticket and the revised travel date must be within the validity period of your Ticket; or

(iii) a refund of the unused portion of your Ticket.

VS tickets are usually valid for 12mo. from the date of issue (per the Global Ticketing Policy, section 3.2, at https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/ng/en/partner-hub/policies/ticketing-policy.html), but they may honour August 2026 as a goodwill gesture. Nothing in the terms restricts you from changing destination, but they may request any uplift in fare.

The only real way to go any further here is to chat to them – they’re perfectly reasonably, friendly folks.

[AL]

China Eastern is your best bet when looking at SkyTeam member airlines. You can, theoretically, use Virgin Points on them. The chart for CE redemptions is at https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/flying-club/airline-partners/skyteam/china-eastern.html. You’ll need to call VS to book.

The CE website is straightforward to use, and there are multiple SHA/PVG-PEK-PKX departures a day on A333s, B777s and A320s.

[AL]

China Eastern is your best bet when looking at SkyTeam member airlines. You can, theoretically, use Virgin Points on them. The chart for CE redemptions is at https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/flying-club/airline-partners/skyteam/china-eastern.html. You’ll need to call VS to book.

The CE website is straightforward to use, and there are multiple SHA/PVG-PEK-PKX departures a day on A333s, B777s and A320s.

[AL]

Yes – it can be. They will price it based on current availability, so be prepared for that to be a showstopper.

[AL]

It’s been a while since I heard of this one! But, yes, it’s disappeared. After the 1,000 renewal, you’re on for two reward vouchers at 2,000. Those vouchers, though, can’t be used for Clubhouse access.

Is stepdaughter young enough that they’ll turn a blind eye on the door?

[AL]

Junior wrote:

Got a VS flight tomorrow – my boarding pass on the app says FLYING CLUB SILVER. I am not silver, I’m a lowly Red. Is this just a UI issue or would I theoretically get the silver benefits? Bit of a moot point as I’m getting in the Clubhouse via FB Plat status anyway, but I am curious.

Quite possible that they’re mapping FB Platinum to VS Silver for the purposes of in-flight perks, and overriding it at the Clubhouse desk. How’d it go?

[AL]

They are supposed to re-price the whole trip if you make a change, but they sometimes forget. That’s a gamble, as it depends who you get on the blower and clearly not something you can ask for! You can’t cancel the return leg after the outbound has been flown (4.2 of the applicable terms: https://help.virginatlantic.com/il/en/policies/terms-and-conditions/flying-club.html).

You’re probably best calling them and seeing if they’ll honour the existing pricing chart – I would be very surprised if they are able to do that on the phone, as it’ll need manual intervention to do so. But, be prepared for “no” being the answer.

[AL]

Concur can be configured to show the bucket – my employer’s instance does this. That said, much of the TP question comes down to the corporate deal that they’ve done with DL/VS/AFKL. If you’re 20 short, I’d be tempted to just throw yourself on a day trip to AMS and back – probably simplest.

[AL]

Choose your programme, tier and operating carrier at https://www.skyteam.com/en/frequent-flyers/ to see how STE/STEP apply to your carrier. To your last paragraph, VS Silver is STE, VS Gold is STEP – you don’t need to do the OW card dance with VS.

[AL]

Of course, it should work – but if you’re in a pickle, customer.care@fly.virgin.com. Drop your PNR in the subject line.

[AL]

masaccio wrote:

That’s all very clever that you know this @AL, but seriously how does this help a customer? Are all passengers supposed to know the inner workings of airline ticketing? As someone who leads a customer-facing organisation, if I pulled off shit like this, I would be fired. If this were my org, we’d fix the email comms if the backend was unfixable.

Concur entirely – that’s exactly what should happen, and is a good example of the contempt that BA has long shown its customers. Financial performance, not customer satisfaction, seems to be the mark of success at BA, and maybe IAG. Sweeping regularly, and alerting customers/agents when there is an unsuccessful action on the ticket after a successfully issued ticketing action, would be a good start to cleaning up house.

[AL]

First off, as others have said, sorry that you had to experience this. The silver lining, I suppose, is that you got your cash back without huge hassle – I suspect there are countless BA passengers in similar circumstances who have had to endure the usual BA bulls*it and web of lies to get their hard earned back, when it was taken from them erroneously.

Sadly, as others have said, finding a ticket-trained staff member at T5 is a rarity – they exist, but very rarely. In the regions and outposts, it is not far off impossible. Providing a phone number for both staff and customers to call, with no real hope of the person answering actually being trained sufficiently well (or caring enough, frankly) to sort the issue is poor form, but all too common. That said, it’s at least representative of most British customer service, true to the “British original” campaign!

masaccio wrote:

I think it’s reasonable for a passenger to assume that having completed a booking on the BA website, and being sent a PNR, the booking has been made. That BA’s systems don’t always generate a ticket off the back of that such that you need to go hunting in non-obvious locations for a ticket number isn’t reasonable. Sadly necessary, yes, but BA cocked up yet again.

The ticket serves the purpose of it being actually confirmed from inventory in the CRS, effectively crystallising the purchase as tickets should (ha – but aren’t always!) be issued only after payment has been made. The problem with relying on the PNR is that they are often created first, before ticketing takes place, and – indeed – you often get PNRs without tickets (such as, for example, when an agent tries to hold inventory or as a whiteboard for playing around with itineraries). Ticketing can’t happen without the PNR, because much of the data needed to ticket is stored in the PNR, and the PNR needs to be shared with various organisations (such as, for example, to kick start cross-carrier ticketing with super PNRs). Technically, the airline could wait to send the PNR to the customer until ticketing has happened, but – for whatever reason – most don’t. I suspect that this is because most are using third-party CRS (such as PARS, Sabre, New Skies, Avantik – and in BA’s case – Amadeus, through Fly) rather than building their own (such as Deltamatic for DL and, latterly, VS). Fly itself is an abomination and is probably in part to blame for a huge amount of the crap we see each day from BA.

An approach that might work is for sweeping to occur – for all tickets not attached to a PNR, sweep them up once a day and try to make contact through PNR data with the customer with a call to action (“hey, can you give us a call?” or “yo, log in at airline.com as we need to check some things”, for example). The remaining tickets – of which there are likely very few, as all tickets should have a PNR referenced – could be handled manually, passed back to an agent (with an expiry date – “sort this by five days from now, or we’re cancelling”) etc.

It would be great if we lived in a world where a schedule change didn’t require re-ticketing, but in most cases, they do. That’s a rather foundational change that would require substantial overhaul at this point, so I don’t see it occurring. The best thing airlines can do is be proactive, empathetic, friendly and helpful – unlike, in this case and many more like it, BA.

[AL]

That said, see if VS Hols. will price it for you – it might need you to give them a call, as I suspect the website won’t see it as a valid route. If they can price it, then you can pay it down with points.

[AL]

Cramond11 wrote:

Jim Utd wrote:

VS Gold does get you privileges other people would get a straight no to. Fingers crossed for you.

indeed, you are 100% right, fee was waivered due to my gold status.

Your privileges also depend who you get on the phone, too – generally, the dulcet tones of a more experienced Swansea person is your ticket to happy days.

[AL]

Vouchers are either a companion or an upgrade voucher. If you choose to use the voucher as a companion voucher, then one of you needs to pay for a seat with Virgin Points (you can buy more, if you haven’t got sufficient), whilst the other travels free of fare – with the taxes, fees and surcharges (TFS) due for you both. A recent LHR JFK LHR trip in Premium for two was about 40,000 points plus a voucher plus £1000ish. You could also choose to use the voucher as an upgrade voucher – in which case, you can swap it for an upgrade, assuming one is available in the next cabin, for either two people one way, or one person return.

You can use up to one voucher per person, but you cannot mix types in the same booking – for example, you can’t use four vouchers, two as a companion and two as upgrade. But you could use four vouchers as upgrade, or save two and do two vouchers as companion. The maximum value, assuming you have no status, is 75,000. It’s worth 150,000 if you’re a Silver or Gold member.

[AL]

Operating carrier’s rules apply, so it’s 1 x 23kg. It is 2 x 23kg if you’re STE/STEP or to/from US/CA. Not sure what else you’re looking for.

[AL]

1 at 23kg, unless you’re STE/STEP or travelling to/from US/CA, in which case it’s 2 x 23kg. SV call economy “guest class”.

[AL]

@mudassir1999 Please stop posting in multiple tangentially-related threads asking the same question. I’ve answered in the dedicated thread (at https://hfp2026mar.kinsta.cloud/forums/topic/purchasing-saudia-miles-ticket-from-heathrow-to-jeddah/) which you opened, so let’s continue that chat there, if needs be.