Virgin Atlantic relaunches flights to Cancun

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• Rob H not Rob says:

  9 Nov9 November 07:05

  A perfect demonstration of how totally screwed the new reward seat system is no doubt.

  • No longer Entitled says:

    9 Nov9 November 07:20

    On the plus side, we now get to play the Virgin Atlantic Dynamic Pricing Sweepstake. Price of an UC one way at launch. I’ll go first: 165,000

    • mradey says:

      9 Nov9 November 09:11

      I reckon they will drop a few teaser (saver) seats in so 95,000 🙂

• ChasP says:

  9 Nov9 November 07:48

  I’m surprised we haven’t had a detailed set of articles on the new system, apart from noting that 25% of flights wont have reward seats.
  If you are looking at UC to LAX/SFO then 99% of flights dont have any! and you are close to a one in a million chance of getting reward seats both ways even with a bit of flexibility
  Apart from these “hens teeth” the default cheapest return UC seat is now around 210k (135k with a voucher) as opposed to 135k (55k with a voucher) under the old system. Thats a 2.5x increase

  Charges of course are still over £1k so we are getting around 0.8p per point as opposed to nearly 3p pre COVID and 2p last year
  Such a massive devaluation is usually only found in Central/South American economies so perhaps its appropriate to start flying to Mexico!

  • ChasP says:

    9 Nov9 November 08:16

    The comment above was based on a scan of availability I did soon after the new system came so I thought I had better check again
    Currently the reward flight checker shows UC saver seats on 11 flights in the next 11 months ( mainly in Jan Feb) to LAX in UC
    Return is even worse with only 1 UC saver flight available on the return in the next 11 months (on the 4th August with no outbound UC reward seats in July!)) Remember there are up to 3 flights a day so probably 800 flights

    If you can slum it in PE for over 11 hours overnight on the way back there are 2 in Jan, 1 in April, 15 in July,9 in August – that’s only 27 in the 11 months

    And on some of those flights there will only be 1 saver seat !

    • Matthew says:

      9 Nov9 November 08:45

      Hi Chas, Is there a quick way to search for these saver seats how do you do it?

      • Rob says:

        9 Nov9 November 09:40

        I’ve got a spreadsheet with every Saver seat, every route, every cabin, every day if you want it – email me.

        • Ilan says:

          10 Nov10 November 12:53

          Yes please can I get it

  • JDB says:

    9 Nov9 November 08:36

    @ChasP – while I understand what you were trying to say and perhaps even be amusing, this is a travel related site, so maybe you should know that Mexico is in North America and that its economy and currency have been strong for a very long time, so the stereotyping/prejudice vs that country seems rather unfortunate

    • Bagoly says:

      9 Nov9 November 18:37

      Those of us old enough remember the infamous Tequila Crisis of 1994!

      You are quite accurate that Mexico is geographically in North America.
      “Latin America” is the term used in Europe (and the USA?) specifically to include Mexico with Central America and South America, but a Mexican colleague uses it to mean only those countries south of Mexico!

  • Rob says:

    9 Nov9 November 08:40

    Coming on Monday. We gave it a week to settle down – we also had to find a way of hacking into the data feed, which we have now done.

    • Dan says:

      9 Nov9 November 08:46

      I had a bit of a look, India seems very variable – Riyadh very high levels of availability.

    • Alex says:

      9 Nov9 November 08:54

      Oh great! Should I wait until then before starting my Virgin complaint?

    • Rob H not Rob says:

      9 Nov9 November 11:37

      Looking forward to the comments count going into overdrive on Monday.

      Any good news at all to publish Rob?

      • Rob says:

        9 Nov9 November 12:03

        Only if you love Ghana.

        • Dan says:

          9 Nov9 November 14:57

          Ghana is an interesting place to visit out not everyone’s cup of tea.

        • Rob says:

          9 Nov9 November 15:38

          Rumour in The Times this afternoon that Virgin is about to pull Accra before it even launches so perhaps thats not a winner anyway.

        • Jonathan says:

          9 Nov9 November 17:52

          If it does survive, and they fly there, it’d be interesting to know how it prices compared to nearby Lagos. Before dynamic pricing came along, it gave the best point per mile valuation.

          I’m guessing the São Paulo idea has been forgotten ?

        • Rob H not Rob says:

          9 Nov9 November 17:58

          As expected.

        • Rob says:

          9 Nov9 November 18:36

          And The Times is reporting that Virgin is going to scrap Ghana due to 787 engine issues 🙂

        • mradey says:

          10 Nov10 November 06:47

          Virgin’s IT is all over the place re. Ghana.

          Some pages return a 404 error with ACC as the destination despite the previous page’s form auto filling Accra.

          Other systems will search for Accra flights successfully but return with no flights for Virgin’s entire booking window.

      • david says:

        10 Nov10 November 19:39

        6k in economy from IAD/NYC with $72 is mind blowing amazing even in Y. But apart from that Virgin is unfortunately that girl nobody wants to take to the prom.

• Tim416283 says:

  9 Nov9 November 08:17

  Being Virgin, how long do we think before they cancel this route?

  • meta says:

    9 Nov9 November 09:00

    March. After all, they need help with cashflow over winter.

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      9 Nov9 November 09:12

      Cancun was good for VS before.

      This is likely driven by V Hols who won’t want their customers messes around.

      Cuba was also a V Hols route (until the US made it difficult for people to enter the US if they had been to Cuba)

• Tiger of ham says:

  9 Nov9 November 08:56

  They are def letting pax on this flight 😁

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