One day we hope that Viking just gets better with their air service, especially since you have to pay the extra fees to pick your own flights and/or go early or stay later than the normal trip days.
I called their “Air Plus” number on June 20, 2024, to request that our flights be “ticketed”. meaning that the reservation becomes a confirmed flight, and Viking can’t arbitrarily make changes like selecting another airline, or significantly moving our flights. It is typically not an issue, but for some reason, this time it was. I was told by the Air Plus rep, who was probably not from the USA, that the flights would be ticketed within 24-48 hours. I watched the flights on Delta.com to confirm it had happened. Nope, it never did.
I called again after 48 hours and was basically told the same thing, a request would be submitted and the flights would be ticketed in “24-48 hours”. I did ask how this was going to be different from the first request I had made, and the Air Plus rep, who once again was not from the USA, just said it would happen this time. How could I argue? Once again…..It did not happen……
I was getting a little frustrated, especially since I had already called twice, so I tried another tactic, and just called the Viking Customer Service number, which always results in speaking to a rep from the USA. I explained the situation to the rep knowing that she could not help directly, but I asked her if I could either get an Air Plus rep from the USA, or a supervisor. She told me she had no control over the Air Plus rep. preference, but she would try to see if she could get the situation resolved. I was put on hold, and a few minutes later, a foreign accent Air Plus rep was on the line, I never talked with the Customer Service rep again.
I specifically asked why the flights were not getting ticketed, thinking there might be some issue. The new rep did not have an answer other than it should have happened on June 20, the first time I called. Of course, she gave me the same spiel, she would submit a request and it could take 24-48 hours to get ticketed. I asked her politely how that was different from attempts 1 and 2, but she did give me her name and extension, and said she would continue to monitor it as long as her shift lasted. I had no choice but to agree and to wait and see if it happened. I wish I could add “Final Jeopardy” music to this post……
I did not check again that evening, but before I went to sleep, I saw that there was a new email from Viking on the flight itinerary. It was nothing specific about ticketing, but I had been told that a new confirmation would be sent out once the ticketing happened. I assumed that the flights had been ticketed, but I was not going to check at Delta.com until tomorrow morning.
The next morning, I went to the Delta website and looked at the flights online, and this time, under the selection for “Receipt, Share and More…” at the top of the flight detail listing, a receipt showed up as an option. This is the easiest way to confirm ticketing on Delta, a receipt will not be listed as available until ticketing is complete, the receipt actually showed the ticket numbers, different from the Confirmation Numbers for the flight reservations. Yea!
So, one may be wondering what all the fuss was about and why we wanted to be ticketed. The answer is, if you want to upgrade any seats, it can only be done during the initial reservation, or after ticketing. Since Viking reserved the flights, we had no option at that time for choosing upgraded seats, so we wanted to be ticketed so we could see what other seat options were available for upgrading.
I selected the change seats option and now we could see all of the available seats from Business Class to Economy, and their associated costs to upgrade. It is nice to do upgrades by each particular light, it may not be the least expensive way to do it, but it is selectable, so we are not paying for upgraded seats on the short flights where there is not much of an advantage. That is the case if you make the entire reservation at a premium seat level, all of the flights will be upgraded, if the seat classification is available on the aircraft.
We were able to see that we could select seats in Delta Premium Select, Comfort + and also for preferred seats in economy. Our choice would be to change to Premium Select seats on the 15-hour flight from Atlanta to Seoul, S. Korea. There were some seats available for $927 per person, and that gets us larger seats, more legroom, seats that partially recline, along with better food and beverage service. The best part is that on the particular airplane we are flying on, an Airbus 350-900, the Premium Select rows have two seats on each side, with four seats in the middle. Of course, we wanted the two seats on the side by the window.
One item I spent some time looking into today was the two seats in the last row of Premium Select that were in front of a bulkhead separating that class of seats from Comfort +, the next lower seat classification. There was some concern that the seats may not recline as far back because of the bulkhead. Stephanie wanted to choose them so that no one was sitting directly behind us, pulling on our seats or kicking them when they moved in and out of their seats. Also, no one would be behind us coughing. I was able to confirm via some online research that there was no issue with the recline, they fully reclined just like the other seats in Premium Select. I couldn’t find anyone who had posted any negative comments about the location.
We both discussed the option of upgrading our seats on the flight from Atlanta to Seoul that morning and later that evening. It was a substantial amount of money, but we were sure it would help us to rest a little better than being in the main cabin in economy. The last time we had seats like these, it was nicer and the section was not even full, making it quieter. Hopefully, that will be the case with this flight. We don’t think there is a lot of upside to getting any of the four seats in the middle of this section, maybe just the aisle seats on either side, unless there are families or groups traveling together. Other than the first row at the forward bulkhead, which offers more legroom and easier access to every seat because of the additional space, none of the seats had been selected in that middle section.
We made the decision to go ahead with the purchase on the first long flight, hoping that the price would not decrease substantially over time since these seat upgrades are non-refundable. In the past, we have normally been on the negative side when waiting to make decisions about airfare and seat availability. If they go down in price, so be it, but at least we had them and also had the location we liked. We selected seats 25H and 25J, which are on the right side and just in front of the bulkhead as discussed previously.
If the price goes down, it might also be the case on the long return flight, and that might make it easier to accept upgrading those seats. The price increase for those seat upgrades is currently $999.00 per person, about $75 more per person than the outbound flight for some reason. For now, we are just looking to upgrade those return flight seats to Comfort +, which just adds more legroom, but only costs $25 per person for that flight. I need to see if we can apply that upgrade to Premium Select if the price goes down before we commit, I do not quite understand all of the restrictions of the non-refundable aspect of these seat upgrades. Hopefully, it would just become an incremental increase, not full price, excluding what we spent for Comfort +. Once again, we don’t want to wait too long to upgrade, the seat selection will not generally ever get better as the travel dates approach.
In the end, if we do upgrade both of the long flights between Seoul and Korea, we will still come out a little ahead by having used the “free” Viking Air instead of purchasing the flights ourselves, but not by much compared to the current pricing of Premium Seat tickets directly from Delta. Currently, the same flight we have with Premium Select seats, bought from Delta directly is $2,800 per person. If we purchase both long flights as Premium Select between Atlanta and Seoul, we will spend $1,926 per person. Unfortunately, we also have to add in the Viking fees for the Deviation (going early) and the Air Plus (ability to pick our own flights), which already cost us $250.00 per person. Totaling these two amounts is $2,176, which is $624.00 per person less than if we had purchased the flights from Delta. That is not insignificant, it is $1,248.00 for both of us. However, we did go through a lot of hassles to get these flights through Viking.
However, at the time we were looking at flights ourselves, the airfare for Premium Select seats through Delta was about $3,500, which is significantly higher than the current pricing for these same flights through Delta. It is frustrating dealing with the airfare costs, one just never knows what the pricing will do, it could have gone up, so overall, we would still be happy with the Viking “free airfare”.
One item to note is that other than a couple of slightly better seats on our flights to and from home and Atlanta, which are less than an hour of flight time, only the flights from Atlanta to Seoul and back really offer Premium Select Seating. Our connection on Korean Air from Seoul to Beijing is on an aircraft that only had business class and economy, so I believe we would not have gotten any better seating than we currently have for those flights. However, the flights are only about 2 hours in duration, so the benefit of better seats is not that great since the flights are relatively short. This is only relevant to the overall cost of premium select flights from Delta had we purchased them on our own, not all of the flight segments offer that class, so the benefit was really only for the two long-duration flights, which we are addressing with our upgrades specific to those flights.
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