We are flying to Orlando in november will my 18 year old son be able to have an alcaholic drink on the plane??

bluemoon,

I can't think of any reason why not, he's old enough! Just remember alcohol effects you more at altitude though. Are you thinking because of the American age limits being higher than the UK's? The aircraft is subject to UK law being a British Airline.

Darren

Virgin Atlantic fly Manchester to Barbados Sundays only

Sorry about that, I was answering a question that appears to have vanished!

but useful information never the less....

well it is if you depart from Manchester

Not much use to Southerners ....... unless they have moved to Manchester

As per the Premium Upper Deck - you can make seat requests online if you have a flight locator ref: and you can pre-requests seats by looking at the seat plan to see what is available. However seat request are still not guaranteed and the airlines will always inform you of this on the websites. The say the best thing is to arrive early at the airport and get the seats you want if that is possible.

I (party of 4) have just returned from New York flying with Virgin Atlantic and would be interested to know how unusual my experience of traveling with that particular airline was.
My tickets were booked direct with Virgin and paid for in full last June. The tickets were issued to me and I was told that my booking was confirmed ~ essentially a contract for service, or so I thought.
When I arrived at the airport in very good time to check in I was told that the flight was over-sold and that despite my 'confirmed' booking ~ confirmed doesn't actually mean confirmed.
So, regardless of the non~changeable clause in my tickets it appears that the contract can't be broken by the customer, but the vendor can do what they like.
Virgin sold me a ticket to transport me from point A to point B on a specified flight and then sold that same seat on the plane to someone else in the hope that one of us wouldn't turn up and would therefore break the contract. Virgin being the winner either way, If I don't turn up they keep my money, if I do they change my flight and keep my money.
There were between 30 and 40 other passengers in the exact same position that we found ourselves in. Virgin had knowingly over sold its seats. This seems to me to be the most horrible and greedy method of marketing and not one that Richard can be proud of.
In my opinion a contract should work both ways. If the vendor is reserving the right to arbitrarily cancel or alter our contract then the customer should have the same rights. If I miss my 'confirmed' flight then I should just take the next one, as was suggested to me when I tried to check in last week.
Other passengers told me that Virgin over sell all of their flights quite deliberately in the certain knowledge that theirs is a win, win situation.

I believe this is what scheduled airlines always do. They reckon lots of businessmen won't show up, but sometimes they guess wrong. Charter ones are different, they just sell the seats they have got. Presume Virgin paid you a decent amount of compensation and put you on the next flight? Still, it must have been a real pain!

I agree with mehmeh, it's quite common with scheduled airlines, it happened to me a couple of times. The first time was with the now defunct Pan Am, I was given cash compensation and a free flight. Some time ago as a frequent flyer I received a letter from Lufthansa asking if I would agree to take a later flight plus a monetary compensation if overbooking occured on any of my future flights, this would be entered into my profile with the airline. As most of my flights at the time with Lufthansa were from Germany to England to visit family and as a later arrival in the UK wouldn't upset my plans I agreed, but up to now it hasn't occured.
I understand how frustrating this may be especially on holiday flights when every minute in the destination counts plus money spent on hotels, car rental etc. I hope Virgin have given you suitable compensation.

All scheduled airlines regularly over-sell seats on the basis that up to 10% of passengers fail to show-up for flights. You won't be the first or the last this has happaned to. New regulations for compensation were brought in to try and reduce this but it still happens. It must be a difficult position to be in but there's little you can do in the circumstances. At this time of year when people are returning home from all over the world in the run up to thanks giving and christmas holidays, more people tend to turn up for flights. Presumably Virgin compensated you and put you on the next available flight?

Charter airlines run on a completely different business model and have different clientel, ie holiday makers on package deals rather than predominantly business travellers on schedules flights so it doesn't happen with them.

Darren

Airlines would still need to get you from A to B so I hope Boo comes back to explain what happened.
I had a friend who got from A to B - BUT via C due to overbooking, but was upgraded in order to do so.

I don't know if this is a problem or not -

I recently booked a Virgin flight to New York via Expedia, into which I entered my middle name into the "middle name" field. This booking was all finalised, and I got my Virgin confirmation code. I then went to the Virgin website to choose my seats, and I noticed that my middle name had been joined with my first (i.e. FIRSTMIDDLE rather than FIRST MIDDLE). Somewhere else on the website (I don't remember where, and the "manage booking" feature doesn't seem to be working at the moment) it says that these details must be EXACTLY the same as on my passport, and a £30 fee will be charged if it needs to be changed.

Could this be a problem for me? Technically it is Expedia's 'fault' rather than my own, but the names aren't mis-spelt, just merged.

Thanks.

Anyone got new on VS52 from Tobago 24 hours late now due 08:03 on 22.11.08 anyone got reason why.

snowyboy,

I've not seen anything, but probably a technical problem.

Darren

I don't suppose anyone could help me with my problem above please?

Thanks

ryansf,

You probably didn't get a reply because no-one is sure. If in doubt, get in touch with the agent to check. This is best done sooner rather than later.

Darren

We are flying virgin to Las Vegas next september and we are flying down to gatwick the night before our flight to LV and we have heard about their twighlight check-in desk,and I have some questions if anyone can answer them please.
1. Does the T/light check in cover all flights
2. will we get our boarding passes then
3. will we not have to goto any other check-ins on the day of our flights
4. will we just have to got our departure gate on the day

Sorry about all the questions as we have never don this before

many thanks
mark