Virgin Airline customers left with credits from holidays booked before the Covid-19 pandemic are frustrated by a lack of opportunities to use them.
The Griffins are among them. The family of six from Canterbury's Dunsandel booked a trip in January 2020 with Virgin Airlines to visit Brisbane later that year.
In March the border closed, and a month later Virgin Australia went into voluntary administration. Future Flight credits were made available to customers with pre-existing bookings.
When Bain Capital bought Virgin in September 2020 they honoured these credits which are valid until December 31 2023.
With Covid restrictions removed and air travel back up and running, many credit holders began finally planning long-awaited holidays.
Kurstie Griffin said that her family was “looking forward to a few weeks on the beach” after the winter weather, and planned on using their $2000 in credits to fly to the Gold Coast.
The Griffins found this was not so simple.
Virgin Australia now only fly out of Queenstown.
That means that instead of making a quick trip from Dunsandel to Christchurch Airport as planned, the whole Griffin family would need to travel to Central Otago.
Those six flights would not be covered by credits, so added a significant cost to the trip.
Griffin said they were prepared to travel to Queenstown, but when attempting to book she was met with a problem.
Credits were not able to be used with their chosen fare.
She said Virgin told her “they allocate two seats per flight for Future Flight credits”.
For a family of six, that made a holiday using the credits exponentially more difficult.
“It leaves four of us in New Zealand while two go to Australia – if we can get on a flight.”
Using them up before the end of the year is unlikely, leaving the family disappointed.
“Pissed off would be the politically incorrect term,” Griffin said.
Travel agent Victoria Keating had access to Virgin Australia’s booking system and used it to check every Virgin flight leaving Queenstown for Australia from mid-August to December 31.
Of the 68,712 total economy seats available, Keating found there were only 53 available to be booked with credits.
She said that is only 0.07% of the seats, or “pretty much nothing” and in business class, about 9% of the total.
When Fair Go approached Virgin Australia about its credit scheme, it did provide some good news.
In its most recent review of routes, 5000 additional seats on flights travelling from Queenstown have been made available to book with Future Flight credits.
Virgin added that “people interested in this route should try to be flexible with their dates”.
Each airline has their own rules for use, so Hadyn Jones goes on a journey to find out how to navigate your credits. (Source: Fair Go)
Once these additional seats were added, Keating checked the system again and found that dates are limited.
She said “it's great they have given us the extra seats but if you can't travel within the next week, it's going to be really hard to be able to use these credits".
In particular there is extremely low availability in September and December. That means booking flights during school holidays could be difficult and unless customers are prepared to travel on short notice they may still be unable to use their credits before they expire.
If you are a Future Flight credit holder and intend to travel before the end of the year, the sooner you make that booking the better.
Virgin encouraged people who are having trouble booking to get in touch with their contact centre.
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