Pre-booking seats with Virgin

[TheGreenTriangle]

Hi, does anyone know about the pre-booking seat costs with Virgin?

Last year, I helped book a long haul flight and as soon as it was bought (several months in advance), you could choose your seat in economy at no extra cost. (Except for extra leg room seats, extra charge for those as usual.)

This year I've bought long haul tickets for March and so far Virgin are wanting to charge for all the seat choices in economy, normal (£25 / seat) and extra leg room (£50 / seat) seats. Obviously their policy has changed since last year.

My question is, in the hope that anyone knows, will there be a charge-free choice of seats when checking in time comes round? Or does Virgin always charge passengers if they want to choose for themselves? I can't afford the extra cost of ensuring we all sit together, so just want to know what my chances of being allocated seats together might be... TIA.

Soup, you may have to phone up for them or they may only show up if you select travelling with an infant.

I could book them last year though so they must have introduced some kind of automatic blocking since then. I keep checking to see if they become available. It's been a long time since any of my 3 fitted a basinet!

TheWoman
But she bought the seat with that option. T & Cs obviously provide wriggle room for many businesses, but if my client has a problem, whether it's in my T and Cs or not, I bend over backwards to help fix it. I certainly don't do something (ie. re-sell the seat) to create the problem in the first place.
I think it's a 'corporate attitude' thing - the little people don't matter - and moral commitment means nothing. In my experience, it's not a good way to build up customer loyalty.

It depends how you see seat allocation. Hotels, for example, just give you a type of room for the price - they might note requests like "first floor please" but make it clear it's not guaranteed.

Obviously if you charge for it, you should honour it or refund. But if it's a bonus (which it is, as it's perfectly legal to fly with an infant on your lap), then they are fine to not guarantee the preference.

True. But if you book a hotel room with a connecting room for your children, that is what you expect to get.

So if you book a seat with a bassinet, ditto.

Who told me? The area director for the whole of the Middle East
It was a big PR thing they did about flying as a family. They spoilt my little one rotten and helped her dress up as a pilot.
Anyway, this was part of their advice, to join the club for double the amount of free checkin.

^^ this was virgin not BA but that was the original q

Hotels will very rarely guarantee connecting rooms, IME, and again will make that clear in the T&Cs.

Without business and first class flyers, economy would either be much more expensive or many fewer planes would fly. It makes absolute commercial sense and is to the long term benefit of all customers for airlines to encourage business and first class tickets with perks etc.

However, I doubt we are going to agree on this!

I think you final paragraph is right!