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I’m booked to speak at an event in LAS early in the new year. As the event organiser is paying for travel, I had to book flights via their event organiser’s travel provider rather than booking myself directly.
LHR>LAS is only handled by BA and Virgin. As apparently they get a corporate discount, the travel provider booked me on to a Delta booking (eg eticket starting 006), into Delta W fare bucket (which translates to V class) flying Virgin metal.
I’m sat on a decent amount of Virgin miles and a half-decent stack of Amex Rewards and was thinking of bumping myself up; there’s reward availability in Upper on at least the outbound. However, I’m worried that the fact that the ticket was issued by a travel agent and is issued on Delta paper, but flying Virgin metal will cause me problems. I’ve done a bit of hunting on both the Virgin and Delta portals for my booking, but both are suspiciously absent of any upgrade offerings.
Has anyone had experience upgrading on VS, but with Delta issued tickets? If so, is the correct route to upgrade via Virgin, or via Delta, as the ticket issuers? Ditto if anyone knows if the fact the ticket was issued by a travel agent rather than direct will cause me problems?
Thanks
As DL issued the ticket only they can do any changes in advance.
So you won’t be able to use VS miles to upgrade such a ticket. Any miles would need to be in a DL account. Is DL an Amex partner to could use your MR points?
Depending on the corporate agreement behind the ticket upgrades may not be possible due to contract not just because a TA was used. DL would know what they can and can’t do with the ticket.
Thanks; yep, DL is an Amex partner, so I can use my MR points.
Thanks – I’ll reach out to DL for specifics around what I can do with the ticket. I’d come to the conclusion that talking to VS wouldn’t likely be a helpful route given the ticket issuance but it’s good to have it confirmed.
DL W to VS V is an interesting one, because – technically – DL stopped letting agents ticket VS-operated W on 006 stock to avoid poor customer experience (see the note at https://pro.delta.com/content/agency/us/en/orphan-page/class-mapping—virgin-atlantic.html). This was causing headaches, because agents were getting customers believing they’re flying in P, when they’re actually in Y.
Have upgraded a DL ticket a number of times. Not as easy as 932 stock and haven’t ever successfully used a voucher, but DL will let you use Skymiles to upgrade it, which is 1:1 from MR. Never have been able to use VS points on 006 stock upgrades, but as with many things DL/VS, YMMV. Good luck!
I’ve been fortunate enough twice this year to upgrade from premium to upper on virgin metal with a Delta ticket. Can’t use a voucher but once award availability was there delta let me use 25000 skymiles to upgrade plus no additional surcharges which was great vfm unlike if it had been a VS ticket where silly surcharges would come into play.
Flip to that was a recent trip to LAX where availability only became available on the day of the flight, delta couldn’t help, said I needed to do it at LHR with VS as check in had opened, concierge in clubhouse would only let me do it for cash as it was a DL ticket. So cost me £800.
You win some, you lose some.Yes but using DL miles on a DL ticket or VS miles on a VS ticket (no matter the metal) is absolutely fine.
But that’s not the question here.
What you cannot do is use DL miles to upgrade a VS ticket and vice versa.
Yes but using DL miles on a DL ticket or VS miles on a VS ticket (no matter the metal) is absolutely fine.
But that’s not the question here.
What you cannot do is use DL miles to upgrade a VS ticket and vice versa.
Yes fully agree, tried and failed with it
A quick update on where I got to with this in case it’s helpful for anyone else in the future.
After my original post, I reached out to DL to try and upgrade myself; the initial handler I spoke to bounced me over to VS which from what everyone who had answered me above had shared wasn’t likely to lead anywhere. I played along anyway and VS said they could upgrade me, but despite the site showing G bucket availability, there wasn’t actually any G bucket availability, to keep an eye on availability levels and call back if I spotted anything opening up. Undeterred, I reached out to DL again; they told me a similar story; no G availability and quoted me 85k SkyMiles per leg to upgrade as a partner upgrade. The agent did advise they expected additional G bucket tickets to be released about 30 days before departure though. I figured the game was up, but set an alert in case any tickets opened up.
SeatSpy pinged me with a boxing day present yesterday; seats had popped open in both legs. I gave Virgin a shout this morning, expecting to get nowhere, but the agent confirmed availability and priced an upgrade at 105k Flying Club miles + £419 for the additional APD.
Your experiences may vary, but thought it’d be worth sharing that I did successfully upgrade a DL ticketed, VS metal flight using VS issued points for anyone looking for this in the future and points wise it saved me about 65k points against upgrading using DL’s new partner charts.
A quick update on where I got to with this in case it’s helpful for anyone else in the future.
After my original post, I reached out to DL to try and upgrade myself; the initial handler I spoke to bounced me over to VS which from what everyone who had answered me above had shared wasn’t likely to lead anywhere. I played along anyway and VS said they could upgrade me, but despite the site showing G bucket availability, there wasn’t actually any G bucket availability, to keep an eye on availability levels and call back if I spotted anything opening up. Undeterred, I reached out to DL again; they told me a similar story; no G availability and quoted me 85k SkyMiles per leg to upgrade as a partner upgrade. The agent did advise they expected additional G bucket tickets to be released about 30 days before departure though. I figured the game was up, but set an alert in case any tickets opened up.
SeatSpy pinged me with a boxing day present yesterday; seats had popped open in both legs. I gave Virgin a shout this morning, expecting to get nowhere, but the agent confirmed availability and priced an upgrade at 105k Flying Club miles + £419 for the additional APD.
Your experiences may vary, but thought it’d be worth sharing that I did successfully upgrade a DL ticketed, VS metal flight using VS issued points for anyone looking for this in the future and points wise it saved me about 65k points against upgrading using DL’s new partner charts.
That’s interesting and good to hear you were successful. Noted for future ref!
Looks like I spoke too soon; I just got a call from VS – the backoffice team had flagged the upgrade and got Customer Services to reach out to me as they in fact can’t process a DL ticketed, VS metal upgrade; only DL can do this as we all thought initially. They said the agent who did the original upgrade shouldn’t have done so; when I questioned them on both why Delta had sent me their way and the fact that I’d spoken to 2 different agents who both had said VS could indeed upgrade, they were a bit nonplussed and simply said the situation was complex and there was clearly a training gap.
They’ve advised me that I need to contact DL and see if they can re-ticket it as a VS flight rather than a codeshare; I’d be surprised if this is anything but a wild goose chase. They said if that didn’t work, contact the TA and ask the same thing, which again I can’t see as being something the US based corporate agent I had to use would want to do, given it’ll cost the TA more as they have a corporate discount with DL. Failing that, they advised they’d have to cancel my upgrade and I’d have to re-do it via DL. I then challenged the VS CS person on the fact that I’d transferred Amex reward points to VS Flying Club to fund the upgrade and I can’t magically transfer them back in order to send them over to SkyMiles and they again couldn’t offer any option aside from vaguely alluding to some compensation.
As expected, DL said they couldn’t help… back to VS to verify exactly what I need to ask the corporate travel agency for. To make life even more interesting, my original flights in the PNR are now showing up as cancelled.
Again, hoping this is helpful for someone else in the future. Should VS get you into a similar situation as they managed with me (Upgrade half processed against a DL coded ticket), Delta and/or your original travel agent (if there is one involved) will likely not be able to help. In my particular case, the botched upgrade had rendered my booking unchangeable by my TA.
I got on the phone to Virgin this morning and politely but stubbornly insisted that they must be able to come up with another solution. Virgin ended up reaching out to their internal codeshare support team who were able to work with Delta to rebook my DL codeshares as VS coded flights for a $50 admin fee. This then allows VS to process the upgrade.
I also posted above that the tax on my upgrade was surprisingly cheap £419; this also turned out to be a mistake on the original agent’s part; he’d made a mistake in the tax calculation on my original upgrade quote. Unfortunately the agent I was working with today didn’t share this with me until the very end of a one and a half hour call fixing the mess they’d created with the erroneous upgrade and didn’t offer me any option aside from paying the recalculated tax, which was just under double the original tax I’d paid.
Needless to say I’ve stuck in a complaint with Virgin about this entire situation and asked that they make good by reimbursing me the extra charges I had to pay to get Delta to re-issue the ticket and honour the original quote for taxes.
That is poor of them, ahibbitt, and I hope they honour your request in your complaint. It sounds like they certainly have a training gap and, whilst historically, I may have given them a pass because there weren’t as many DL fliers on VS services, in recent years that’s changed, and I can’t believe this is the first time that it’s come up.
Let us know what you get back from VS to round the circle.
VS Customer Care team reached back out to me following my complaint and:
– Reimbursed me the extra costs I’d had to pay Delta to get the ticket re-issued on VS stock
– Offered to refund me the additional £381 or so taxes they’d asked for following on from the original miscalculation of tax due. I say offered, because someone in the ticketing team had already waived the extra tax but hadn’t told anyone including the Customer Care team; if was only when I flagged that I’d never seen the extra charge appear on my credit card that the fact someone had already decided to waive it came to light.
– Refunded me 20k of my 105k Virgin points as compensation for all the hassle.The Customer care contact who dealt with my complaint was also both apologetic and appreciative of me not having just angrily shouted at them and instead just calmly laid out the facts and what outcome I was looking for.
Although VS did manage to make a massive mess, they have been good at recovery in my opinion, although it did take persistence on my part. Thanks to everyone on here who provided information and support.
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