Seats lost after flight reschedule

[magste]

I have a rewards booking MEL PER in July, made the reservation back in March. I paid extra for Economy X and selected my seats. A month or so ago I received a notification the flight schedule had changed -departure was one hour later. Same flight number, same aircraft (737-800). I didn't think too much about it, just noted the new departure time and acknowledged the change as per the notification instructions.

The other day I logged in to check my booking and noticed it said no seats assigned. I thought it weird, but opened booking details to check and re-select the seats. To my surprise, there were no seats available in economy X. I thought maybe I had seats reserved in the background but not showing on the booking, so I contacted Virgin. They confirmed that due to the rescheduling seats were not allocated and there were no Economy X seats available, only normal economy seats.

Is this common practice for Virgin? Just because they reschedule a flight (without changing plane type) the seat allocation is void, and they don't reallocate seats or take into account who has already paid for upgrades, etc. for the rescheduled flight? You'd think it would be easy to keep track that for flight X rescheduled, NN Economy X seats are already reserved, etc? Or if not, at least notify us that seats need to be re-selected after the reschedule? At least I did get my upgrade payment refunded...

 

[ferntree]

Oh that's bad. I appreciate you posting this, so that others (including myself) are pre warned.

 

[jase05]

I have a rewards booking MEL PER in July, made the reservation back in March. I paid extra for Economy X and selected my seats. A month or so ago I received a notification the flight schedule had changed -departure was one hour later. Same flight number, same aircraft (737-800). I didn't think too much about it, just noted the new departure time and acknowledged the change as per the notification instructions.

The other day I logged in to check my booking and noticed it said no seats assigned. I thought it weird, but opened booking details to check and re-select the seats. To my surprise, there were no seats available in economy X. I thought maybe I had seats reserved in the background but not showing on the booking, so I contacted Virgin. They confirmed that due to the rescheduling seats were not allocated and there were no Economy X seats available, only normal economy seats.

Is this common practice for Virgin? Just because they reschedule a flight (without changing plane type) the seat allocation is void, and they don't reallocate seats or take into account who has already paid for upgrades, etc. for the rescheduled flight? You'd think it would be easy to keep track that for flight X rescheduled, NN Economy X seats are already reserved, etc? Or if not, at least notify us that seats need to be re-selected after the reschedule? At least I did get my upgrade payment refunded...

From time to time shuffles happen and perhaps another flight cancelled with passengers moved on to your flight. You should always be able to get any fees paid for Economy X reimbursed if they don’t offer the product

 

[Natalie Z]

I have a rewards booking MEL PER in July, made the reservation back in March. I paid extra for Economy X and selected my seats. A month or so ago I received a notification the flight schedule had changed -departure was one hour later. Same flight number, same aircraft (737-800). I didn't think too much about it, just noted the new departure time and acknowledged the change as per the notification instructions.

The other day I logged in to check my booking and noticed it said no seats assigned. I thought it weird, but opened booking details to check and re-select the seats. To my surprise, there were no seats available in economy X. I thought maybe I had seats reserved in the background but not showing on the booking, so I contacted Virgin. They confirmed that due to the rescheduling seats were not allocated and there were no Economy X seats available, only normal economy seats.

Is this common practice for Virgin? Just because they reschedule a flight (without changing plane type) the seat allocation is void, and they don't reallocate seats or take into account who has already paid for upgrades, etc. for the rescheduled flight? You'd think it would be easy to keep track that for flight X rescheduled, NN Economy X seats are already reserved, etc? Or if not, at least notify us that seats need to be re-selected after the reschedule? At least I did get my upgrade payment refunded...

That's really disappointing - sorry that this happened to you. Thanks for sharing with us though. It's good to have the heads up.