I'm starting to plan a summer vacation to Europe for 2009; I have ~400k CO split across 2 accounts (self + wife).

We want to fly VS UC LAX-LHR. I have done this on CO miles "solo" before, and they always booked me on the codeshare, rather than the partner flight # (reasonable enough).

When I look on continental.com for next April, I see the VS cosdeshare coming up on the main availability screen when I do a search - but only for 2 pax. OTOH, the VS website shows 4+ award seats available most days in April.

Does anybody know if the CO award availability is limited to what they have on the codeshare, or if CO will book into VS partner award inventory if the codeshare inventory is used up ?

I'm pretty sure CO can only book you on the codeshare flight # for flights that are operated as codeshares.

I'd just call up and talk to a person.


VS UC is the best award that CO offers these days.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8830/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

I know that the inventory that CO has access to is a subset of that which VS has. Beyond that, calling may get you more availability and is worth it if you want the seats, though no guarantees. CO is not limited to codeshares flights for redemption as they are an option on HKG-LHR.

Thanks for the answers; of course I'll call and try, but was hoping to get an understanding ahead of the call.

From previous conversations with agents when booking, it seems that it is as I feared - only CO codeshare awards for flights that have codeshares. So maybe a non-codeshare flight may give better results - but probably not worth it. I may need to head over to CC.....

VS only displays two seats at a time to CO. That doesn't mean there aren't more.

If you want all four on the same flight, hold 2 on one record, and see if you can hold another 2 on another record.

Fantastic tip ! I'll post back in a few weeks after I have tried to book with info on what worked !

I have definetely used mles on VS flights there were not codeshares (did not have a CO number).

IAD-LHR and LHR-CPT. two different trips.

I took what the OP said he was told by CO to mean that if the VS flight is a CO codeshare, CO must book it out of codeshare inventory; not that it is not possible to book non-CO codeshared VS flights as rewards. You are correct, of course, that it is indeed possible to book non-codeshared VS flights with CO miles.

Mr. AusExp and I are trying to book a flight on VS in business/first in 2009 (we're mainly looking at getting to Mauritius), and CO desk shows no availability after Jan 1. The guy at Continental wondered if the Virgin availability hadn't been loaded yet. Does anyone have any experience as to what this window is?

We also tried getting to Seychelles via Dubai on Emeriates, but gave that up after the painful "roll the dice, try a date, and find out 24 hours later there's nothing, repeat" - process

I got a seat on VS in July back to EWR using my CO points. I echo what the other posters I saying, call and get a live person.

yeah, you definetely have to call to get on a VS flight (no CO flight number) using CO miles. i think you can book codeshares online with miles, but only live for non codeshares.

I prefer live than online for reward travel anyway. some of the agents are so darn good at finding seats using parnter and wierd airport pairs.

When a CO codeshare exists for the flight, they will only allow you to book out of CO inventory. This is substantially less than VS inventory and is a subset of the seats that CO has bought on the flight. It's a CO reward on a CO flight number

When there is no CO codeshare, you are booking a partner reward on the partner flight number. This comes out of their inventory and I have found that this tracks pretty close to what you see on virgin-atlantic.com. Its not identical i.e. when there are limited seats <2 then VS often keeps them for their own rewards only.

We were unable to get flights on the CO codeshares last year but had to connect somewhere anyway. Since there was no CO codeshare in Chicago we had wide open availability on the VS flights from ORD-LHR.

I'm not sure if there are still any non-codeshare flights remaining. Perhaps LAS?

LAX-LHR awards are showing up on continental.com for April 2009 right now. It seems to be 330 days.

The LAS flight is not a codeshare. Neither is the recently added second flight from IAD. There are not a lot of them, but it is worth checking to make sure if you're concerned about earning EQMs. For reward redemptions it is less of an issue.