Transfer miles to Virgin Atlantic or ANA
 

I'm a bit confused here. It looks like going from eastern and central US to Japan I can do it for VA with 120k miles although doing the same with ANA miles would cost me quite a bit more. Is there a reason I should transfer to ANA over virgin atlantic if I want to fly ANA in F? I have read ANA gives a bit more award availability to its own members and I was going to do J one way and F the other but that comes out to 117k. Just not sure which program to move the points to.

If you have found round trip award availability on ANA F you should call Virgin Atlantic, put the awards on hold and ask them to price out the taxes and fees, and then transfer to VS. Once the transfer is complete you can call back and finalize your booking. I believe the hold is good for five days in most cases. If you're booking round trip and leaving from a hub that ANA operates out of, there is very little reason not to use VS miles, in my opinion.

Thanks. Looking into it it seems like I can do do ORD-sapporo in J and then come back new york in F with ANA miles. I don't mind going to ORD for the departure but it seems if I book with VA I would need to buy a ticket for NY to ORD and then back (since I can't get an F flight from tokyo to NY with VA and I would also have to buy a separate ticket from tokyo to sapporo. That along with the restrictions on availability with VA compared to ANA and my understanding that F is not a huge jump up from J in terms of quality with ANA I'm thinking maybe I should just go through the ANA program. Had there been wide open availability with VA involving new york then my math would be different. If I am off in my understanding of the two programs please let me know.

Just to avoid confusion for others in the future. VA is Virgin Australia & VS is Virgin Atlantic.

Any idea what the S stands for?

If you are connecting beyond a hub that services North America directly, it is likely better to use ANA miles than VS miles. The VS redemption is very specialized where you're just looking to get from a US hub to, mostly, Tokyo and then stop there. The ANA redemption requires more miles but handles necessary connections (as you've found). I'd go with ANA in your situation.

I actually called today to book this and the ticket hold was 24 hours.

Questions about redeeming miles on ANA using Virgin Atlantic's program should be directed to the following thread: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/virg...ub-points.html

Please keep discussion here to redemptions on ANA Mileage Club.

Regards,
armagebedar
ANA forum moderator