Virgin America’s online booking buggy?

I make almost all of my travel arrangements online and, at first glance, Virgin America’s website looks good — not overly cluttered, with obvious tabs and not too many unnecessary bells and whistles. But it doesn’t take long to find a serious bug in the machinery.

Everyone who flies regularly between Southern California and the Bay Area knows that not all trips are overnight visits — sometimes you depart in the morning and return that night. Everyone knows that except, apparently, Virgin America.

I tried to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco on a Friday morning, returning on a Friday night. But Virgin America wasn’t having any part of it. Unlike Southwest’s excellent website, where you can specify not only the date but also the time windows for your flights, Virgin America offers only day options. And if you click on the same day for your departure and return, Virgin America puts the brakes on the whole transaction, saying “Your returning flight cannot be before your departing flight.” The only apparent way around it is to type in the wrong date for your return by making it one day later. Then, when the return flights come up, you click back to the previous day. It would be very easy to book yourself on the wrong day, if you weren’t paying attention.

Seat selection (yes, you don’t have to board by zone) is easy. But the upselling is relentless. If you spot an empty seat in an exit row, you get a friendly little pop-up reading, “Congrats. You just got one of the most coveted spots on the plane. But because you are now in an exit row, your seat comes with extra responsibility.” And extra money. In addition to outlining the safety requirements, Virgin also lets you know exit row seats cost an additional $15.

But wait! It looks like there’s an open bulkhead seat at the front of the plane. Not so fast. “You have selected a seat in row 3 which has an extra 13 inches of knee room. This is a premium seat and will cost an additional $15. Would you like to continue?”

I did, reluctantly. Because all the $44 seats were sold out and I wanted the extra legroom of both the exit row going and the bulkhead returning (I’m 6’1”), my roundtrip ticket ended up costing $278.80. Even at that steep fare, the tickets were nonrefundable, so when I went to reschedule my trip, I learned there would be a $40 change fee tacked on.

I decided to hang on to the Virgin credit for some other trip (maybe when I spend the night in San Francisco!), and rebooked on Southwest, where I could easily make a reservation for a departure and return on the same day, and buy a fully refundable ticket (one day before travel) for less than Virgin’s nonrefundable one, at $258.80.

- John Horn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16, 2007 at 5:35 pm by Andrew and is filed under Business Travel, Frequent Flier, Los Angeles, News, Tips & Advice, San Francisco. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.