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  4. Refund policy

Virgin Atlantic Global Refund Policy

All refund transactions for tickets issued are to be managed via your GDS, including calculating, processing and reporting. For specific entries or formats, please refer to you GDS Helpdesk.

Should you be unable to process the transaction through your GDS, we ask that you submit a refund application via BSP Link.

Refunds can be processed through your GDS if the following criteria is met:

  • Ticket is un-used
  • Ticket is partially un-used
  • Cancellation of a reservation and refund of an original issued ticket before midnight the day after ticketing
  • If a full refund is due - for death of the passenger or qualifying relative and adheres to the fare conditions
  • Authorisation has been given by VS Account Manager or Sales Support
  • If there is a full refund due to a Virgin Atlantic schedule change as per the Global Schedule Change policy, or authorisation has been given by VS Sales.

For BSP users who raise a refund application for any of the above criteria, Virgin Atlantic will charge a GBP30 administration fee.  This will be applied per ticket and will be deducted from the final refund amount.

Refunds should only be sent to Virgin Atlantic to process if:

  • Tickets are over their 12 months validity
  • Coupon status on the ticket prevents you from processing in your GDS
  • Virgin Atlantic has re-issued the travel documents; therefore, coupons are under airline control. You should mention “VAA reissue” in the text field on the BSP Application or email.
  • There is a technical fault with your GDS preventing the refund being processed, this must be stated on your application to us as the reason for refund request, along with the passengers’ reason for cancellation
  • A ticket has been utilised but there is a refund due (e.g. downgrades, residual amounts to be refunded following a re-issue)
  • The ticket has been reissued with a different form of payment (FOP) than the one used on the original ticket.

For ARC users unable to process via their GDS due to any of the above reasons:

Click on the below link to open the refund application form on the website

Instructions on completing the form can be found here:

There will be occasions when a customer may be entitled to a full refund of the entire ticket or specific sectors, so the below processes must be followed. Failure to do so may result in an ADM.

  • Flight Cancellation – VSbulletin received regarding flight cancellation, follow the commercial policy shared including adding the OSI to the PNR
  • Bereavement - If the passenger dies before using the ticket, a full refund of the ticket will be issued upon request. When a passenger is unable to travel due to the death of a member of his/her immediate family (traveling or not) or traveling companion. Prior to travel, you should send the death certificate to the Sales Support team. Sales Support will then add an OSI into the PNR and a full refund can be processed.
  • Waiver – If you feel there is a genuine reason to waive the conditions, you must contact your Sales Support teams.  Each case will be assessed individually. If the conditions are to be waived, your Sales Support team will add an OSI into the PNR. Once the OSI has been added, a refund as per waiver can be processed. 
  • Prior to processing the refund, please check if Government and/or Airport taxes are refundable.
  • For all non-refundable tickets, both fare and YQ are non-refundable.
  • For fully refundable tickets or refundable with a fee, the YQ will be refundable.

The cancellation fee should be applied as per fare conditions, in some instances this will be per fare component and in other fares the most restrictive conditions apply.  You should always refer to the specific fare conditions. Should any cancellation fee result to be higher than the fare, this should be deducted from YQ value. 

E.g.  Fare = 400, YQ = 200. Cancellation Penalty = -500, Refund = 100

YQ is the fuel surcharge – not a TAX - and the surcharge is part of what we refer to as the Tariff.

In the Virgin Atlantic Conditions of Carriage it states:

"Tariff" means the published fares, charges and/or related conditions of carriage of an air carrier filed, where required, with the appropriate authorities.

Therefore, YQ is not refundable because it is part of the Tariff not tax. YQ surcharge has been non-refundable since May 2010.

 

On ‘non-refundable’ tickets:

  • Government and Airport taxes ARE refundable
  • Fuel and Insurance surcharges are non-refundable: These are YQ, YR (other airline surcharge) and XF (airline fee)
  • This will need to be processed as a manual refund in order for the applicable taxes to be refunded

 

On ‘refundable with a fee’ tickets:

  • Fares that have a cancellation fee as a % will take a percentage off the actual fare and a percentage off the YQ surcharge 
  • Fares that have a cancellation fee as a flat amount, i.e. £50, this will come off the FARE ONLY and YQ surcharge will be fully refunded
  • This will need to be processed as a manual refund in order for the applicable taxes to be refunded.

 

On 'fully flexible' tickets:

  • On a fully flexible ticket, the YQ and all other taxes will be refundable and processed as an automated refund.
  • The Point of Sale (PoS) of the ticketing location is used to determine the time frame for refund
  • Reservation must have been created and ticketed within 24hrs
  • Cancellation and refund to be processed before midnight the day after original ticket issue
  • Prior to processing the refund, please check if Government and/or Airport taxes are refundable.
  • Fare and YQ will be fully refundable

If ticketing and departure are on the same day, the itinerary must be cancelled, and the ticket voided before midnight on the same day

If a passenger has already started their journey (after commencement of the first sector) and they do not  want to use the remaining sector of their ticket, they need to pay the one-way fare of equal or higher amount for the journey travelled in the same or next higher RBD.

However, there's no refund of fare or carrier-imposed fees (YQ/YR) if the one-way fare for the utilized portion is greater than the original ticketed fare.

If there's no specific net fare filed for the one-way sector, apply a one way published fare.

This policy allows passengers to adjust their tickets mid-journey but ensures that they pay for any additional fare applicable , without refunding any differences in fare or fees if the current fare is higher than what was originally paid.

Suspended (SUSP) status has been updated on your ticket/s as we have processed the refund for you. As this status cannot be changed this will minimise any duplicate refunds.  Refunds can be checked via your BSP report or if available on the ticket remarks.

The huge volume of refund requests we have received, combined with constraints on our teams and systems during the pandemic, has meant that refunds have taken much longer than usual to process and we’re very sorry for this. With increased processing capability and greater certainty, we can now move to turn on the GDS to support our trade partners and clear the backlog of Virgin Atlantic refunds quicker.

Payments are being prioritised based on how long the customer has been waiting, from the point of their refund request, working in order from March 2020 onwards. Our plan for refunding your accounts for the recent commitments on maximum refund timeframes (i.e. for customers that requested in August, a maximum processing time of 80 days, for those requesting in September, a maximum of 60 days; 30 days for refunds requested in October, before returning to normal levels). We will ensure that the ‘oldest’ refund requests are processed first, and we will endeavour to refund sooner than these stated timeframes wherever possible.

We’re monitoring external conditions extremely closely and reviewing our flying programme and holiday schedule on a regular basis. Based on our rigorous forecasts we are confident in these reduced timeframes and expect these will be met. 

We are aware of the small number of customers that have been waiting over 120 days. We remain focussed on resolving any remaining bookings that fall into this category, and these are being processed as soon as possible. We’re making improvements to reduce any further incidences of this, and we sincerely apologise for the understandable frustration this has caused. 

Unfortunately, we are currently unable to give updates on individual refunds applications as we are extremely busy helping customers with impacts to immediate travel.  However, if you do have an urgent enquiry and are a managed account, your first point of enquiry should be sales support, who can triage your request.  For unmanaged accounts, please contact your wholesaler or consolidator

No authorisation or approval is required from Virign Atlantic for refunds that follow our COVID-19 Flexibility for Customers Policy

Simply continue with the refund through your GDS.  To assist with the correct deletion of RA’s please provide a report of all RA’s you wish Virgin Atlantic to continue to process for you and send to sales.support@fly.virgin.com, our refunds team will then process these as quickly as possible.

All refunds on ticket/s over 12 months that are in relation to COVID-19 will be exempt from any ADM’s

When the original FOP is no longer available the refund must be actioned by our refunds team via BSP

Virgin Atlantic accept partial refunds through the GDS, apply the sector fare for any unused sector/s, should you require assistance with the calculation as per our refund policy apply through BSP. 

ATC will be available for Virgin Atlantic (932) tickets

No waiver codes are required, re-submit using your normal process, for specific entries or formats, please refer to you GDS Helpdesk.

There will be no requirement to add an OSI for COVID-19 refunds

We will raise an ADM as per your BSP cycle to correct the refund and recover the excess payment if necessary. Admin fees may apply

You don’t need to do anything, chargebacks are being processed by us directly, any duplicated refund request will be rejected.

The suspended status usually means there has been a chargeback made on this ticket, you will not need to do anything

You may apply through your GDS for all refund applications submitted from 1 June 2020, any applications prior to this date will be managed by our team and processed as soon as possible.  

As of 17 September 2020, we stopped the rejection process, you can delete your refund application (RA) and process the refund through your GDS

A ticket which has now reached the expiration date will need to be processed by our Refunds team. It would be beneficial for all agents to provide a report on all tickets they are unable to process in one go for us to then manage.

This has been a VS administrative error, where the direct customer has received a refund minus the commission, we would like to ask the Agent to pay the difference. When the refund is to the agency, this will be minus the commission which will be correct.

We have discovered there may be an “open status” on a ticket that has been refunded. Our team are working through a report to clean this up, however any duplicate or incorrect refund will generate an ADM on the relevant sales report cycle.