On line check in experience

[RooFlyer]

I'm only an occasional VA traveller (ie Silver), so am not here all the time hence apologies if this issue (I think its an issue) has been covered recently.

I have 4 VA flights in the next 2 days, so went to on-line check-in (about 13hrs ahead of first departure tomorrow morning). Get message indicating a 'Payment problem', so I call the guest contact centre to see what's up. Sorry, she says, the booking was made by a Travel Agent (correct - like every other of my flight bookings in the past 7 years) "so I can't see that much on my screen".

"Pardon? Is this Virgin I'm talking to? You can't see much of the Virgin reservation details?"

"Correct - I'll put you through to the Agency area - they should be able to help."

:shock: :evil:

After a wait, get onto Agency area. She can't see any problem with the reservation.

"That's OK, I just want to select my seat and do check-in - can you do that for me please, as I can't do it on-line?'

Thereafter there was 10 minutes of back and forth as she unsuccessfully tried to check me in and select seats, and then explain how the flight (still over 12 hours away) was now under "airport control". That surprised me, but whatever. THEN she said that if I called back "during the night" I should be able to select my seat and check in.

"You mean it will come out of airport control during the night?"

"Yes"

I said thank-you and gave up. :-|

You should be able to select seats 13 hours out from a flight, shouldn't you? Is it normal for a flight to come under 'airport control' 13 hours out and then exit from airport control some time later?

Oh, after hanging up, I went back into the Virgin site, and selected seats quite normally.

 

[AustraliaPoochie]

Yes, you or I should be able to do OLCI 24 hours from flight time.
ONLY time you can't do online check in with VA, is that if you have an international flight, this is one of my gripes, few weeks ago, I had a VAd linked to a NZi flight to NZ.
Cant do OLCI for the VA leg, because its linked to the NZi and had to have my passport scanned.
I do OLCI for rellies on D7, and and they can do OLCI, even AAX is a discount carrier.
But hopefully, you will suceed in getting an airport check in OP.
Best of luck.
And sorry I can swish my dog tail and make it "happen" for you.
EDIT: so it worked, in the end for you, hmmm... that phone call must have done something.

 

[eastwest101]

Rooflyer - I am a regular VA passenger and have found that with my corporate travel agent bookings that OLCI has been very hit and miss (about 50% success rate) for my vanilla domestic flights. For me its completely random as to which flights are or are not selectable for OLCI or seat selection. The VA rep whom contacted me about this a while ago mentioned that there is an issue with non-IBE bookings (e.g. Corporate travel agents) not "talking very well" to the VA web site OLCI or online seat selection. If you create and check your flights on Tripcase you should see all your flights on there, I am not an expert but that says to me that the problem is not with the Sabre reservation system itself, but with the VA front end.

And yes - this has been the case since Jan 2013.

I have never been redirected on the phone to the 'Agency area', that is a new one for me, but I am usually calling around T-48hrs to do seat selection.

 

[webslave]

For me its completely random as to which flights are or are not selectable for OLCI or seat selection.

Yeah, I've always had this sort of rubbish. Just another reason I'd rather strip naked, put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger with my toes than go through a travel agent.

For a while we were going through Virgin group bookings through an arrangement with a national sporting league because the league would get a kickback. One day when arriving at the Lounge in SYD several hours early we were told that even though we are all SG
we were not allowed to fly-ahead on the basis that our flights were done through group bookings. Upon asking what we could do about it they told us our only option was to call group bookings - which was lovely advice given it was around midday on a Sunday and group bookings would not be open until Monday morning. Ultimately we sat in the lounge for six hours which I suppose beats the terminal, but it was just so unreasonable. I've also found it won't let you use the self-check screens at the airport sometimes.

It's far from the only time - a few years ago on my honeymoon my wife and I travelled to the States and at the insistence of my mother we went through a travel agent for our flights. Dumbest thing I could have done, I reckon. All of our domestic flights in the USA were with VX;
- On our flight from LAX to JFK we couldn't check-in online and instead had to do it at the counter. The result? Back row of economy against the bathroom with no recline.
- On our flight from JFK to LAS we couldn't check-in online again and I was assigned a middle seat with no recline in the back row, whereas my wife sat in a middle seat six rows forward on the other side of the plane.
- We arrived in LAS to find that the travel agent had for some reason booked our itinerary such that we got off the plane ex-JFK which was to continue on to SFO and waited four hours for the next flight to SFO. We asked the staff at LAS how that would happen and they said it's strange because the plane we were originally on was only two-thirds full compared to the one we would be getting on, whereas the next one would be full. Needless to say we again were not able to sit together - awesome honeymoon so far! They kind staff told me that our travel agent had somehow locked our bookings which means they can't really do much with them, and worse yet - if we failed to show up for a single domestic flight it would cancel our entire itinerary including our flight back home.
- I tried to contact our travel agent (Harvey World Travel IIRC) to ask WTF their issue is but, of course, it was the other side of the world so they were closed, being around 3am on a Saturday. And to think; the travel agent we dealt with had a big graphic in his email signature saying "Without a travel agent you're on your own". Hell, if I'd booked it myself then I could fix it myself.

Then, most recently, we worked on a large touring show with flights booked through the most prominent entertainment travel agency in Australia with Virgin. Amongst our team of 12 crew there were four PNRs - two of these PNRs could check-in online and at the self-check screens, and two could not. It remained this way for the whole tour. Then, one night some of us got caught in the fog at MEL and couldn't take off; where previously the staff couldn't let us fly ahead or anything like that all of a sudden they were able to modify our booking to put us on flights the following day. That said, the process to do that involved standing at the counter for thirty minutes, so I doubt it was easy for the staff.

 

[eastwest101]

Don't have a choice, but we use a corporate travel agency, not a retail agency, they always have someone on call so if things go wrong at 8pm on a Sunday night they can still fix problems like misconnects and will ring me straight back with a solution if required.

Thats my test of a real travel agency, can you ring and talk to a human being up to 10pm on a sunday night? Because of murphy's law thats when missed connections and other problems can often appear.

 

[AustraliaPoochie]

On the VA website, NOT VFF, there is an option in the box, book flights.
There is also a box for check in.
Try this box for check in, type in your 6 alphabet PNR, and it should work.
All my ways of checking in for my upcoming flight, 47 hours out, didn't work, typing in my VFF on the one up from CHECKIN, didnt work. Even in CHECK IN, entering my VFF didn't work.
But the typing in of the PNR worked.
Though it didn't want to allow me to email my boarding pass to my email account though, from which I could have used my ipod to check in at the gate, or to get access to the aircraft anyway.
If someone wants to try this one next time you fly VAd and let us know, thanks.

 

[webslave]

Have tried that on mine that haven't worked and that also does not work.

Today on a PNR I booked myself it wouldn't find me by VFF number but could find me by PNR, even though my VFF number is certainly on the booking.

 

[Dan_]

I have a 100% success rate of doing mobile check in (that's for about 70 flights over the last 12 months) . I always select "retrieve with velocity number", cause I'm lazy. I just checked in for my 1630 BNE- SYD tomorrow and had no issue. We use Stage and Screen as our agency, which I am told is part of Flight Centre. Maybe that helps?

 

[webslave]

I have a 100% success rate of doing mobile check in (that's for about 70 flights over the last 12 months) . I always select "retrieve with velocity number", cause I'm lazy. I just checked in for my 1630 BNE- SYD tomorrow and had no issue. We use Stage and Screen as our agency, which I am told is part of Flight Centre. Maybe that helps?

That's who we used on the last tour. Our guy was hopeless and their idea of security of financial details is embarrassing.

 

[Dan_]

That's who we used on the last tour. Our guy was hopeless and their idea of security of financial details is embarrassing.

That sucks. We use them for all our corporate travel and haven't had an issue yet. We are in a very different industry though, so maybe our bookings are much simpler.

 

[RooFlyer]

I'm pretty sure my original issue 'problem with payment' was an issue with the VA web check in system, nothing to do with the actual TA, or TAs in general.

The second issue, not being able to do OLCI 13 hours out 'because its under airport control' I also think was the VA system, and the airport control thing was just a way to tell me they couldn't do anything for me.

No biggie, it happens to everyone at some stage and goodness knows, QF's web site isn't anything to write home about.

Both flights today were good, in that they were unexceptional. Pay your money, get flown, get off, end of transaction, satisfied.