Hi, all - DH and I were flying LHR-BOS, we had booked RT PE (upstairs) tix about 7 months ago. We were unable to check in online yesterday (we were staying with my in-laws, who don't have a computer), but even with the awful traffic and weather, we arrived at LHR and the check-in desk 1 hr and 45 min before departure. The check-in attendant informed us in no uncertain terms that our seats had been given away, as we were not there early enough. She'd be able to put us in PE, one of us upstairs, one downstairs, but that was the best she could do, as the flight was completely full. She flatly refused to do anything else, saying it was our fault, we had not arrived early enough (I could not find the 2 hr cutoff on my paperwork, nor is it listed under the LHR info for Virgin's website). We immediately saw a customer service rep, and he "found" us two seats together upstairs that had just "opened up". We were still annoyed, but we were sorted and simply thanked him and ran (disturbingly, the ticket counter rep ran up with two boarding passes for the same two seats, but we figured it was a glitch, they'd been booking us simultaneously or something).

Well, we got onto the plane, and - you guessed it - a couple from economy, which was terribly overbooked, had been upgraded to our new seats with their teenaged daughter sat behind them, also upgraded. We stood back in the galley for 30 min waiting for a verdict...but gee, despite the fact that UC was half empty, they obviously were loath to upgrade us. They looked at everyone's tickets, determined that we belonged in PE, and they actually tried to move the couple they'd upgraded back to coach, as some people had not gotten to the flight in time, and seats had opened up. Awful behavior, IMO. The couple refused to move, as their daughter would have been left in PE alone...and after much eye rolling and huffing and whispering, we got upgraded to UC.

There was another couple (behind us at the check-in line) who had the exact same thing happen to them, so they actually had to upgrade 4 of us, though the reluctance was so obvious that we were all laughing about it..."P.S., you don't belong here..." It was a bit annoying - we weren't trying to be upgraded...we simply wanted what we had paid for! And come on, an hour and 45 minutes???

UC was awesome, by the way.

But the real question is - does anyone know about this 2 hr rule? Maybe I'm missing something - normally we'd have been there 3 hrs before, but the traffic was terrible. And has anyone had this happen before?

Thanks! Hope you all had a nice holiday. May you all get upgraded to UC because of a computer error.