Tried booking flights 3 times each time it was cancelled. I upgraded my ticket to give me more options. Still couldn’t book. In the end virgin cancelled my tickets and wanted me to pay another £80 per person to revalidate them.

I’ve lost £100s of pounds and still no balloon trip.

It’s well over subscribed, flights are regularly cancelled and they take your money without giving you the service you’ve paid for. It’s a scam of sorts.

Oh and the customer service followed the company line and quoted the T&C. Didn’t given tried and see it from the customer’s view.

In reply to Patrizio Romagnoli.

I completely agree with you. I bought my ticket 2022 and my partners 2023. Still waiting for the balloon flight.

I had hopes this morning as an AM flight went ahead at Aylesbury. But the PM Welwyn garden flight ended up cancelled.

The weather is warm out. They said cancelled due to gusty winds. There is barely any wind out there. It’s pathetic.

Do not buy tickets, it’s a scam
I purchased two hot air balloon tickets for my partner for Valentine’s Day 2023. However, the flights have been canceled every time, either due to wind or clouds. They always have a new excuse. The tickets will expire in July 2024, and they refuse to refund my money, even though they cannot provide the service I paid for. This is a scam.
I do not recommend this company to anyone. They are dishonest and unprofessional. If you are considering booking a flight with them, I urge you to reconsider.

Absolute scam!
Money is being held without being ever able to take a flight. I got my vouchers as a present in 2017!!! and still to this date have not been able to go on a flight, get to do another experience or get a refund!! terrible.

My partner booked as a present for me in 2017 a voucher for a hot air balloon flight with Virgin.
To this date, (2024) we were unable to take the hot air balloon flight, get a refund, or another service.

The flights are really hard to book since there are rarely any spots, if we managed to book a spot on a flight they got cancelled on the same day or the day before. The vouchers expire after 2 years and you need 8 cancellations to get a partial! refund hence the keep-up of finding and booking a new spot becomes a part-time job. It is an endless cycle of extending vouchers and trying to get a spot. After now more than 7years of trying to get a spot we are now at 6 cancellations I believe, it is very difficult to get 8 cancellations since the vouchers expire as I said before in the lengthy process and also after all these years eventually as a customer you give up on booking a spot every week on focus on the other joys life has to offer. A really clever scam, since the weather and the “availability” of flights aid to impossibility of booking one. Please note we have booked flights that got eventually cancelled on ideal weather conditions for flights (on several days there were many hot air balloons taking off in the same cite) but Virgin decided to cancel due to “bad weather” conditions, how convenient!

The customer service is aware of this and offers nothing ! there are actually many bad reviews of Virgin Hot Air Balloon flights. With the same complaints that people feel scammed. Essentially the money for the vouchers is being held for several years with a cleverly planned system of interlocking variables which make it nearly impossible to get on a flight. I do believe now to be fair there are no actual hot air balloon flights taking place by Virgin and that all the photos are staged and it is just another tactic to hold money to open new Virgin enterprises.

DO NOT BOOK!!!

I bought 2 tickets for the balloon trip and explained that I would have a 2 week window in the country to use them. We booked a date for the first week of August so this is peak summer, the weather is not going to get better all year.
The flight was cancelled on the morning of the flight by the pilot. I contacted Virgin and was told there are no other dates available in my 2 week window and to fill out the refund form.
After much back and forth (3 weeks) with trying to get the refund form submitted correctly I was told that because I am unable to get a refund due to not buying refundable tickets which are able to be cancelled.
The tickets were not cheap at all, and I think its very wrong that I would not be refunded for them even though the cancellation was made by themselves and not me. . Beware when buying and booking with Virgin balloons !!!