Originally Posted by Guava

I am confused by the pessimism that many expressed here re: partner award travel using FC miles. Could this be highly dependent on the airline partner in question? I recently redeemed FC miles for a 120K partner award in Int'l First Class for Christmas (mid-Dec and back on January 2nd), can't get any busier than this high demand period. Suffice to say, VS had no difficulty getting the seats I wanted on the dates I wanted. The availability matched 100% the said partner's own website. Naturally, the partner in question isn't Hawaiian or Virgin America seeing that neither of them have a 120K Int'l First Class award with VS.




I disagree. Now, I wouldn't touch most of the said airline partners but select ones have proven to be both good value and reliable. As for using FC miles to fly VS to London and pay gazillion in "scam charges" and UK APD, thanks but no thanks.



This is quite possibly true...for some airlines but not so with others. I think we should note that with a super size asterix.



To be honest, I was on the fence regarding the latest Citi transfer bonus. I was debating against myself about it for weeks. Then it occurred to me I should do a test run, so hence, I picked up the phone and called VS wanting to book some highly sought after Skytrax 5 Stars airline Int'l First Class for the upcoming Christmas. Call me crazy, I was fully expecting such test to fail given the nature of the request and the timing. To my surprise, availability was plentiful and the process quite painless. The VS FC agent was knowledgeable, a UK based agent, who not only provided his own extension number in case I wanted to reach back to him but was able to confirm everything on the spot. Surprised by the ease of the process, I told him I need to have the award on hold seeing that I didn't have that many VS miles in the bank and will need to transfer them over. No problem, he put my award on a 48 hours hold. Suffice to say after dumping tons of TY points into VS, the award is now ticketed and still have 6+ figures of VS FC miles left for another booking if necessary.

I don't think using the VS miles for Hawaii is a worthwhile idea even if available considering that the above mentioned ticket is worth just over $20,000 USD if booked in cash for example. If one really wants to fly to Hawaii, I would just buy a ticket using cash. UA was running a special fare, not sure if it's still available, of about $1350 CAD return from YUL/YYZ to HNL via EWR in UA Business/First Class. The EWR-HNL segment is on their lie flat product although as far as the catering is concerned, it's typical UA domestic = might as well forget it. So roundtrip east coast - Hawaii in premium cabin could be had for less than $1000 USD and that was this year in the winter months, why would anyone want to waste any miles on this when the paid fare is so cheap?



Seems to me, HA is the problem, not every VS airline partners.



Maybe just give up on HA but and look for other airline partners? Seriously, losing HA is hardly a big loss.