Virgin Atlantic have this morning launched an aggressive campaign against British Airways (BA). In a new and unusually attacking move, they have announced an offer they’re calling #VAnotBA!
In what may amount to a shrewd move following BA’s well documented May Bank Holiday troubles, Virgin are offering you the chance to switch your flights away from BA with the incentive of an extra £50 discount.
How does it work?
This offer is aimed at customers who have booked long-haul flights with BA and are still within their 24-hour ‘cooling off period’ that allows them to cancel at no extra charge.
Virgin are offering to match the route and dates of your original booking and give you £50 off their quoted fare.
What is important to note here is that they are NOT offering to match the price of your BA flights and then add a further £50 discount! That means you need to carefully compare BA and Virgin prices and make sure you will still come out ahead before jumping in on this deal.
How to use this deal
There are a number of key conditions to note about this deal:
- All bookings must be made over the phone, but are subject to receipt by email of a valid BA booking confirmation.
- In advance of calling the dedicated Virgin team to book your Virgin Atlantic or Delta Air Lines discounted ticket, for them to be able to confirm your BA booking and honour the £50 discount, you must forward your BA ticket confirmation email (containing route, dates and ticket price information) to VAnotBA@fly.virgin.com
- Once you have forwarded your BA confirmation email, you are then supposed to ring the team on 0344 209 4715 in order to arrange your new booking.Please note: Virgin Atlantic Airways or Delta Air Lines flights must be for the same dates, same origin and destination and same cabin as your BA booking.
- Offer is only valid for new bookings made with Virgin Atlantic for Virgin/Delta flights between 00:01 on Tuesday 13th June 2017 and 23:59 on Thursday 15th June 2017.
- This offer is only valid on Virgin Atlantic and Delta Air Lines operated flights departing from UK airports. Your BA booking must have been made through a direct BA, UK point of sale (i.e. http://www.ba.com or via their direct UK contact centre).
Verdict
I think this is a really interesting move from Virgin and it will be intriguing to see what sort of take up this offer gets.
If it is intended to capitalise on the recent surge of ill-feeling towards BA and their handling of the Bank Holiday issues, I can’t help but wonder if this offer might have been even more effective about a week ago but we will see.
The one other seemingly obvious key point that is still worth a mention, is to ensure you leave yourself enough time to cancel your BA booking after booking a new flight with Virgin. You don’t want to end up with 2 bookings!
You can find out more details about this promotion on this special page on the Virgin website.