Virgin Australia first announced the introduction of Economy X seating in May of 2017. The extra legroom seats are now installed on the entire Virgin Australia fleet.

For those not aware about Virgin Australia’s Economy X product, it’s basically a seat with extra legroom in the Economy section, have access to dedicated overhead storage compartments, priority boarding and priority access to meal and beverage options.

The Club, Platinum and Gold members of Virgin’s frequent flyer program are able to reserve these for free and traditionally these higher status’ get priority in choosing these seats, but as of late, that’s necessarily not the case.

As member Sludge321 posted on Australian Frequent Flyer, it appears that passengers even without status can select these front seats without holding Gold or Platinum.

Here’s a dummy booking I made to see if this is still in fact the case, here’s what I found:

As you can see, these rows are available even without having to enter my frequent flyer number into the booking. This used to not be the case so it’s quite interesting to see this happen.

So why is this happening?

Well, there’s not really any information at all regarding why this is happening. If Virgin were to scrap the rule for Plats/Golds getting advanced seat selection, we would have heard about it so it’s highly unlikely that’s the case.

Another reason could be an error in the booking system that Virgin aren’t aware of yet. Whatever the reason, it’s both a positive and negative, depending on how you look at it.

If you’re a Gold and Platinum member, this is pretty frustrating as it’s always a nice benefit to have those front row seats so I understand why some members would be angry.

However, if you’re a passenger with no status, this is a fantastic error to take advantage off, the prices for Economy X can get in the $100 range so it’s quite handy to remember.

What do you make of this?, let me know below.