We had our window/aisle seats assigned when booking the flight VS009 for 1/3/2011 from London to JFK. We arrived at Heathrow airport more than 2 hrs before scheduled departure time that day. However, the lady at the check-in told us because we did not check in online at head of the time, they released our seats. Either we had to pay extra fee for extra-leg-room seats, or we will need to be seated in the middle. We did not have Wi-Fi in London, how could we check in online? When is this the rule that the seats will be released? This started the beginning of the very angry flight for us.
When we at the gate, we were hoping there would be some empty window seats we can switch to, if not all the extra leg room seats were purchased. We asked the gentleman at the check in, and he was nice enough to let us know that row 53 and 54, which were closed to our seats, were still available. If they were not taken at the time of taking off, we could feel free to take them. Once we boarded, instead of just taking the empty seats, we asked a stewardess to let us know if those seats ended up free so that we could switch. At first, she mentioned "the flight supposed to be full, but again you never know". So, we waited until almost all the passengers were boarded. We switched to two of the empty seats, without asking the same stewardess. The cabin door was closed and we thought we were okay to sit at those seats. Then the same stewardess came over to ask us the go back to our assigned seats, because her "manager" told her it's not fare to the passengers who paid for the extra leg rooms. I have never heard that you cannot switch seats in the economy section, if they were not occupied! What if there are more passengers to be seated, and, only those extra leg room seats are available? You just wouldn't seat them because it's not fare to the ones who paid extra? We had to go back to our middle seats. Those window/aisle seats were open. Then after the plane took off, someone else took one of the seats. The passenger was sitting there the entire trip, and guess what, that stewardess did not ask the passenger to go back to her seat! We felt extremely discriminated and angry the whole trip. Why were our assigned seats got released at first place, when we checked in at the airport?!? We even arrived at the airport ahead of time. Then the way the stewardess discriminating us is just not acceptable! We had the impression that Virgin Atlantic was the best airlines in Europe, when we flying to London. The flight back is still making us so angry today, and never want to fly this airline again!!
I did write an compliant email to them but never gotten any response, not even an auto reply. read more