Virgin Atlantic Frequent Flyer

A few years ago I had a holiday and flew with Virgin Atlantic, in the days they still cared about people. As a result I joined their loyalty scheme which gives points for flying and also from a credit card with their name.

Over the last couple of years I have amassed a huge number of these points and so decided to use them to up my carbon footprint (see blog entries below) and go back to Australia on holiday.

In the past it was a simple call to Virgin to book the upgrade seat and pay for another but now things have changed. "sorry there are no upgrade seats available" , "you can try calling back each morning between 8-9 (sounds like the local doctors) or you can keep checking the web site". OK, not a problem, "when are seats likely to be available?" "You would have to phone and keep checking".

So I got on the website, for 5 hours I tried, every possible combination of dates over a 3 month period as far ahead as you are allowed to book. Each time I had to put in all the details, tick the box, have the website fail, retry, input the details, you get the idea.

They have a very few upgrade reward seats available but they wont let you use the 24 hour trip you have to do a 38 hour trip. There are plenty of other upgrade seats for people but not under the loyalty reward scheme. It seems the loyalty scheme is to keep you loyal to the brand, its a one way thing.

I can not imagine traveling for 38 hours, 14 of which are sat in an airport waiting for a connecting flight.

But this is not the worst of their loyalty scheme. They also give "Free Companion Flights". Wow excellent! Well no actually. I have "earned" 4 of these so far but not used any. You see to take a companion along free you have to buy an expensive ticket for yourself. Then if you do manage to find a reward companion seat available on the flight you want (Unlikely in itself) you have to pay the taxes and surcharges for the free companions. This amounts to a higher cost for the two seats than to buy 2 tickets on the same plane in the same class. Their answer on this is "yes that can sometimes be the case", well actually tell me when it isn't the case.

I posted a message on a website specifically for Virgin flyer's and got several people telling me that I was being "a bit off" for expecting to use my loyalty points on a flight I wanted and to be happy that they all know loads of people who have flown other places, not Australia, using their airmiles.

Yes the lady on the phone told me that I could easily get to New York.