Virgin Atlantic...

[MurielTheActor]

Just had incredibly stressful time trying to check in online for flight tomorrow to New York - site couldn't show seating plan (surely one of the benefits of checking in online) and I couldn't check me and DD in at same time so had to do it twice and hope that we got seats together. She prefers an aisle seat but they allocated seats and I had no way of knowing where they were.
Shall be having stern words and Bag Drop tomorrow.

All in all totally unsatisfactory .
Just warning as could be disastrous for families.

Singapore Airlines are the same. For some reason you can't check in online with children so you always end up with all the good seats taken. Why do airlines do this?

We have just come back from a holiday to Orlando and we flew Virgin and had the same problems checking in.

It's nothing to do with the children as I rang Virign the day I was having problems as I could only check in one family (we were travelling with some friends on a linking booking). Virgin told me that they do not pre-allocate seating unless it is one of the ones you pay for eg leg room seat and that they reason that you might not be able to check in properly is that all the seats together may have gone and there may only be singles left or not enought seats together for your party. They also told me that they only release 60% of the seats for online check in and that they keep 40% back for on the day desk check in. Whether or not that is true I don't know. However when we got to the airport there was a massive panic that our firends would not be sitting together and the check in guy had to make phone calls and go off and investigate. In the end, 3 of them were together and 1 was somewhere else.

We also heard loads of people moaning about online check in.

I have to say, I haven't flown Virigin economy for 9 years and felt that it had seriously deteriorated. No gaming on the TV headrest (there was 9 years ago), food awful, check in process abysmal, air hostesses rude - I heard some guy politely asking for a glass of water and the air hostess saying "I've only got one pair of hands!!!". No impressed really.

The one excellent thing that Virgin did do however was give us free check in and bag drop at Downtown Disney in Orlando which meant we had our boarding cards and could relax for the rest of the day until we left. Unlike the poort guys next to us who got to Downtown Disney only to be told that their flight to Manchester was going to be 24 hours late!

Service standards have certainly dropped on this airline in the last few years and cost cutting is much in evidence. It was not at all surprising to me that Skytrax (airline review website) downgraded VA to that of a three star airline.