I looked at a seat map for early January, 2014 and there were only a few seats booked. That said, I know you can't count on the seat map being a total representation of booked/available seats. What I wonder is if Virgin is trying to get the folks who have to travel during the TG/Christmas holidays to book now (at the higher rate) and then free up non-refundable seats toward the fall. Another guess might be to have folks who want to use Elevate points for travel during holiday time use more points to snag seats on the dates they want to fly.

I found it odd that the refundable only fares extended to early January. I will need to book travel during the second week in January and was surprised that the day I looked at (1/8/14) was refundable only fares.