Virgin’s dynamic pricing is live with excellent deals

Virgin Atlantic’s dynamic redemption system came live today as promised. People are taking it very differently but I stand by what I had predicted earlier, that changes are actually more on the positive side, at least for some people.

As a reminder, VS will no longer have fixed prices on award bookings. Instead there will be “saver” seats that are priced equal to or lower than before (for now), as well as other seats that are totally dynamically priced with no cap. Remember that Virgin has an official reward seat checker which shows you availability with cost in a calendar view.

Starting with the bad things:

• There’s no longer guaranteed saver seat on every flight. As Headforpoints revealed, 25% of the flights won’t have any saver seats at all, which is a huge step back
• An upper class seat could cost up to as many as 350,000 points
• For tickets issued on or after October 30, the change and cancellation fee will increase from £30 / $50 to £70 / $100

And here is the brighter side:

• An Upper Class seat may cost lower than 30,000 points on off-peak dates
• The fees (carrier-imposed surcharges) have dropped across the board, in many cases significantly

Virgin was notorious for having ludicrous YQ on most of its routes, especially those to the USA. The fees are much more reasonable now, and here’s a JFK-LHR example:

Although still much higher than the $6 that US airlines charge, the numbers are acceptable at least, especially in the lower cabins. As you have noticed however, the cash element is also dynamic and varies between flights of the same route, not just the points cost, which feels very strange.

I’ve been looking to do a trip to Dubai over Christmas, and the new prices are amazing:

Previously the fees on Premium and Upper Class were 800+ AED and 1400+ AED respectively, let alone requiring more points. No doubt that I’m going to cancel and rebook.

Looks like the best deals are for in-bound flights to London, which makes sense given the silly APD ex-UK flights have to pay. Another Cape Town example where the Upper Class fees are ~£150:

The numbers look more aligned with the previous PVG-LHR route, which Virgin has cancelled unfortunately. For a return trip, you might be better off booking the two legs separately.

One more interesting observation: Economy could cost more than Premium and Upper Class…

Today I saw many furious comments saying how terrible this change is, but I’ve been trying to phone Virgin since 2pm to make a booking using my voucher, so imagine how many people are rushing to take advantage of it right now.

For those who are flexible with travel dates the change may be quite good, but those who can only travel during half-term and bank holidays might be significantly worse off, given the cost on those dates can’t be cheap. I don’t think those eyewatering numbers like 350k is relevant though, since those seats wouldn’t even have opened up in the original system for booking anyway.

What I really don’t like is uncertainty, as unless the price is fairly low already, I have no idea if it’s going up or down in the future and have no option but to keep monitoring. If the price drops, I’ll have to choose between regret and swallowing the £70 change fee.