FijiBill

Priceline said Virgin approved the email request to revert back to the original flights and Priceline got me set up with my original itinerary. So thanks Priceline!

Now I have (nonreclining) exit row seats as AS MVP. I will try the T-24 call in for MCS upgrades.

gary_nj

I flew one of these last week and wanted to report on a few items, mostly related to seat selection. By way of background, I am an Alaska MVP Gold 75K member, mostly from flying on partner airlines. Before flying this, I didn't have experience with Virgin America, and very little experience on Alaska metal. My routing was PDX-SFO-FLL-LAX-IAD-SFO-PDX.

My departure from PDX was Tuesday, 22 Aug, the day after the solar eclipse that was visible in Oregon. ExpertFlyer was showing zeroes across the board for all VX flights from PDX to SFO for the day, so I was expecting a bump-a-thon. I was told at check-in, though, that the flight was not oversold. (As we were boarding, a Delta flight to LAX near our gate was oversold and the agent was offering a $1000 travel credit for volunteers.)

Although I had pre-selected seats (before Mileage Plan members had access to preferred seating), I wound up sitting in none of the seats that I had pre-selected. On the first leg, PDX-SFO, the plane was just about full, but ExpertFlyer's seat maps showed a last-minute couple of no-shows in 8A/B so I grabbed 8A and had an empty middle.

If there is one theme from my experience, it is that VX's gate agents don't have consistent knowledge about seating benefits for AS elite members. I am not sure when AS elites became eligible for Main Cabin Select upgrades, but gate agents were kind of hit or miss with that. I would certainly recommend trying to do that at T-24 through the call center, despite some of the horror stories of the call center.

For example, when departing SFO for the first time, I flashed my Gold 75K card and asked about exit row seating... the gate agent told me that, "It requires an upgrade fee." So I wandered off, and later asked someone else who put me in 10C immediately. Similarly in Fort Lauderdale, when I asked about seat benefits for me as an elite member, I was told that there really weren't any, but they would put me in row 13. (Row 13 seems to be blocked for gate assignment, and on my flights was kept pretty empty.)

From LAX to IAD overnight, the flight was pretty full but Main Cabin Select was light. I asked at the gate, and the agent said that I would be put on an upgrade list and cleared 30 minutes before departure. However, as soon as I walked away from the gate, I looked at the app and my seat was changed to MCS. (I am not typically a fan of bulkhead seats, but row 3 on the VX planes is nice!) Again at IAD, I asked about MCS and was denied but wound up in row 13 by myself. For the final SFO-PDX leg, I was upgraded to MCS although I needed to ask about it twice.

In my experience, the gate agents at SFO and LAX seemed to be more aware of some of the recent changes than the agents at the outstations, which I guess makes sense. In the end, I wound up in MCS in three of six segments, and wound up in row 13 in another two. I never had anyone sit in a middle seat next to me. So the whole run was really not so painful.

During my time in IAD, I took advantage of the Turkish Airlines lounge and shower (with Priority Pass). The shower was nice, but a bit disappointing... the lounge has exactly one shower and it was not cleaned between customers. When I arrived at the lounge, the greeter advised me to ask the person who was serving food for access to the shower... she told me to just check to see if the door was locked. There was no signup list or anything. When I noticed that the door was open, I mentioned it to the food server, who handed me a towel. The towel reminded me of a towel from a budget motel in the US. So the shower was great after several long flights, but it was not quite as plush as I might have expected.

It's been a week and my miles have not yet posted. One thing that I noticed was that when my boarding pass was re-printed at the gate, my AS number did not appear. I asked one gate agent about it, and was assured that it was in the system. So we'll see.

Bottom line - having the flights not be totally full, and having access to MCS or row 13 at the gate (and ExpertFlyer to check seat maps) made this a very bearable 36 hours.

PDXPremier

Great report! Is row 13 only available for selection from gate agents? I'm assuming it's normal seating (window view, full recline, etc.), correct? Now that the SFO-FLL leaves too early to make the connection from PDX, I have to overnight in SFO the day before....were you on a SFO-FLL flight before the schedule change?

gary_nj

Row 13 is a typical row - nothing particularly special except that it is usually shown as blocked when looking at advance seat maps. The last row or two might also show as blocked. I don't know how row 13 is typically handled but on my flights, it seemed to be assigned by gate agents... I don't know if you can get access to the seats earlier.

I am not sure when the schedule changed, but on Aug 22 when I flew, I departed PDX at 6:15am for SFO, and the SFO-FLL flight departed at 9:31am.

gary_nj

Miles posted today (Sept 2) for flights taken on Aug 22/23.

wilma

What a mess, my sfo-fll & fll-lax flights were canceled for nov 15. They were replaced with sfo-las flights, when i tried to rebook the fll flights they claim there is not enough time between flights in fll, over an hour? Ugh....

wilma

Called again and they said virgin no longer flies from sfo-fll? True? Twitter team can’t help with reservations...

CDKing

MCT (minimum connection time) is 30 min so they are wrong.

Tell them to look at the VX website on 11/15 VX 1340 SFO-FLL @ 9:30AM is still selling seats.

wilma

The cs woman was just flat out lying, i called back and finally was able to get my flights back. They also claimed it was impossible to start the trip in pdx, even though there was plenty of time, which worka out well so i don’t have to spend the time in portland. Their cs line is appalling, the worst.

PDXPremier

Knock on wood but it's been months since the last schedule change for my October trip and I don't expect any more now that we are so close to departure date...was there a recent schedule change for November? If so, seems pretty close-in than normal. I do find it interesting that the SFO-FLL is pushed back a few hours in November which allows for same day connections from PDX unlike the current schedule which forces an overnight in SFO the night before.

wilma

I did not have a schedule change, the flights were canceled and i never found out why

bosca418

I had a similar experience as gary_nj. I just got back from my LAX-JFK-SFO-PDX-SFO-BOS-LAX trip last Friday. Fortunately, my wife and I (both MVP) were able to be upgraded on every leg of our trip to MCS. Apparently, when I had originally called to inquire about the upgrade the virgin csr had to separate our reservations.....not sure why since we both had status. They weren't able to upgrade on our first leg but when I asked the ticket agent we were upgraded and for every leg going forward I just asked the ticket agent an hour before departure and was given an upgrade. MCS definitely made it more bearable. I do have another trip coming up in late October and haven't been notified of anymore more changes/cancellations. It's been awhile since the last notice and hopefully this one stays put.

For those of you positioning or stopping over in PDX with the priority pass card, there are 3 venues that will give you a $28 credit for you and each qualified guest. I'm not complaining but this perk is going to get squashed quick.

PDXPremier

Weird....

PDXPremier

So were you and your wife able to sit together in MCS? My wife and I are both MVPs on separate reservations and although we can now be added to the auto upgrade list for MCS, I was afraid we'd get auto upgraded into separate seats so I figured I would just call or Tweet VX at our upgrade window.

CDKing

My trip is finally fixed. Now I just need to figure out where I'm going to stay in San Francisco. They are letting me take a mid day flight the day before due to the re-timing of the morning flight. Figured I'd get a mini vacation out of this work trip.