Originally Posted by
cajunguy
With Japan opening up in a bit, and everyone and their cousin booking, I'm looking to get over there next year since our 2020 trip wasn't possible. I understand we can search VS for ANA flights, my question for this is there a way to get a calendar to come up on the VS site when searching? I know about changing the '-dates' to '-calendar' in the URL.
I put in the From and To and select One Way, enter in a date which I'm just searching in July/Aug for now but want to actually go in late Sept. One passenger just to search, we'll be 2 for the actual trip. The Search Options area has Show Flexible Dates already checked and it's kinda un-checkable. Select Points and Upper Class. When I click the arrow to search I keep getting that error message "Sorry, no flights....". I do see Economy and can change to the calendar view.
It seems as though I can only see 1 day at a time....and that's not very efficient. There has to be a trick to change the calendar view from Economy to Upper Class, right?
You don't search through the VS website. You just book through them. Which this means is you use a 3rd party website to check availability. You do this by going to
https://www.united.com/.
1. I suggest clicking on "one-way" and "book with miles" and "flexible dates"
2. Put in your desired airport, then TYO as the destination. Some suggest using different airports to find these flights, you might not get your desired airport. Popular airports that ANA flys out of for these nice award flights is SFO, LAX, JFK and ORD.
3. Travelers - 1. It's very hard to find 2 award flights on any of the flights, and for the people who do got extremely lucky. When I did my search, I only found one at most and it usually flew out at some stupid time. It was always midnight the next day and landed in TYO super early in the morning 5-5:30 AM.
4. When the results show up, generally the reward flights for ANA is the first few. It sorts by default the desirability. So any of those 1 or 2 stops are toward the middle and end. The first results is what you're looking for. Most of the time you'll get either United flights (Obviously you don't want to fly with them) or economy with ANA which you don't want either.
5. The search I did 2-3 weeks ago yielded most first class, followed by 2 business class. I spent close to 2 hours and I had to manually search each day until it came up. This picture shows how it would look before you book.
https://cdn.onemileatatime.com/wp-co...lability-2.jpg. In my case, I only saw one award flight per day for business or first. If you see the award flight available, put it down somewhere and try to book it when you can. Virgin is 24/7 so you can book anytime you want. Also, if you see it available, it's real time and it's still ready for you to get until you can't search for it. I tested this when booked mine the other week.
6. As of two weeks ago, I was checking dates for next year and alot seems to have been snatched up already. I looked most of Feb, March, April, May and June and found almost nothing. I'm not sure what is left. From what people here and what I read online, you can check award flights up to 331 days in advance. Flights are very hard to get and I was fortunate enough to find alot when I did search. Don't lag on it like me or esle the more desirable dates will be gone before you know it. My suggestion is to look starting for SEPT of 2023 when we're in OCT. Now that I learned how this works, I'm going to check more frequently and way more advance. I think the fact I was able to get something was because I caught in the early rush right when it was announced Japan was opening up. Now that the cat is out of the bag, it looks to be that flights will be hard to get (again).
7. When you do find a flight award, you must call virgin at 800-365-9500. Before you call, you must have an account before they can check this for you. They will ask you for your ID number of your Virgin account before proceeding. Go through the phone tree and an agent picks up. Tell them the day you want, class, airports you fly out of and so forth. They'll look it up and confirm with you on the call if the flight is available or not. They suggested to me do call first before transferring any of your points since it's final once you move it over. I booked with Chase points and transferred them to Virgin and it was near instant. Business will cost you 45,000 points + around 200 USD for surcharges. First class is 55,000 + 393 in surcharges. They work fast and can get your book confirmed in minutes.
8. Once you get your flight confirmed, you deal with ANA afterwards. I had to phone them up for a clerical error as well as picking my seat. But after all said and done, it's not a bad process. Just not happy with paying more for surcharges now than what people paid before, but that's post COVID life.
In most likelihood, I missed some detail out there but I can clarify it if you need help. I wish my present self could of told my past self this and saved me alot of headache, but here we are and I had to learn it like other people. I wish I had a more detailed guide like this to fully explain the whole process but I hope this helps.