belfordrocks

Thanks guys, I get it now

Also be careful when booking domestic business on DJ/VA, some of the aircraft have not be reconfigured including most of the trans-Tasman versions, so there's a chance you'll end up in "premium economy" instead.

bangkokiscool

Well I was able to extend my award ticket (originally LAX-SYD-LAX only) to add positioning flights AND add flights to AKL. I now have CVG-ATL-LAX-SYD(stop)-AKL(dest)-SYD-LAX-SFO-CVG, right up to the 8 segment and 1 stopover rules. And kept it all for 150K SM!

The AKL flights are VA52 and VA51, the only Virgin flights to AKL (the others are operated by Air New Zealand).

Sadly the domestic flights are in coach except ATL-LAX which is 77L biz. I miss the days of being plat, as I had to bite the $150 reissue fee per passenger (two on the itinerary). Hopefully a schedule change will allow us to reissue a more direct routing home.

Gotta say, in spite of the high YQ this is still a darn good redemption value, to go all the way from CVG to AKL with a stopover in SYD. I spent about $2400 to get my SM account from 60K to 300K during last month's transfer bonus promotion, and paid $800 per ticket in YQ and reissue fees. All in, $4000 for two tickets.

thebaron

By chance, did you also look into KE? It can be a pain to navigate around the blackout dates, but a recent award that I booked to SYD/AKL was only $90ish in fees. Factor in $140 for a flight to connect across the open jaw and you still come out ahead.

Spicy B

I know as a roundtrip the taxes come out to about $600. Does anybody know if this fee is evenly split if done as a OW? Lets say I fly the outbound on DL and the inbound on VA, will the taxes go down about half? Or does one direction incur more fees than the other?

dagnyt

Great info, but it definitely taxes your desire for a low mileage J fare vs. time spent trying to book it.

Attempted to do this a couple of times before I finally got someone on the Diamond line who would dig in and figure it out. She had to make more than a couple of calls, but she finally seemed to have it working.

Unfortunately, as others in this thread have noted, it continues to try to dump it into a Y fare for 100,000 miles. But even though it showed availability for the J fare it simply could not be priced out as J--for any of the days that showed availability. Rep called to get help from the ticketing desk and, as it turns out, just because it shows availability doesn't mean there is availability. There's no live updating of inventory (or probably any updating) going on with V Australia. So you can't really find out if J is available until you go to book it and it actually prices at the 150,000-mile amount. Which is a little bit of a pain.

Anyway, if I have the hour-plus to spare today, I'll try calling again to see if I can get it to work on some additional alternate dates for May. Excited to see if I can get this to work.

Alpha

According to a DL agent I spoke to, the economy award code was T.

pacheco18

Question about when mileage tickets become available on VA.

I called today - nothing for Jan 4 or 5 2013 (330/331 days out).
Rep said nothing released beyond 12/6/12.

Does that seem right or is the rep missing something?

mcmtech

I tried booking a V Australia trip using my Delta Sky Miles today. I was after:

One way ticket
Origin: Perth (PER)
Destination: Indianapolis (IND)
Date: Flexible but chose March 10th, 2012

On the Velocity awards website, I found availability for 125,000 miles (+$376 taxes):

Sat 10 Mar 22:45 Perth to Brisbane - VA473 Operated by Virgin Australia
Sun 11 Mar 09:55 Brisbane to Los Angeles - VA7 Operated by Virgin Australia Intl.

I called Delta to see if I could book this segment, but they said it's not possible to book out of Perth because they are DJ operated flights. Velocity shows me they are VA operated flights.

Is there something else I should tell the representative?

mtkeller

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

First, that will cost you 150K DL miles, as they will charge for a round trip even though you're booking one way. Second, you should be able to do it, so I'd call and ask another agent if you really want to do it.

mcmtech

Just curious, why will they charge for a round trip? If that's the case, there is no advantage for me compared to booking an award ticket through Delta directly.

mtkeller

Delta doesn't do one-way award tickets at one-way pricing. You pay for a round trip even if you only have a one-way ticket. The pricing is also based on the DL award chart, not whatever the Velocity engine says you'd pay in Velocity points (but it has to be the cheapest category ("Award" I think? Definitely not "Any seat".) on Velocity to book through DL).

belfordrocks

The Velocity website should only be indicative of availability, and the amounts of miles charged are those of VA's own members and not when booking with DL miles, which would cost a flat rate of 150k miles.

mcmtech

Thanks, it makes more sense now. I've always been under the impression that one-way award tickets were cheaper based on some award search tickets I did a while back. I just checked again, and you're right it's the same number of miles.

cpinstein

Do you recommend booking a one way on V business class and then trying to have it reissued with a return when the reutrn date becomes available 3 weeks later? I'm platinum, so there shouldn't be a charge. But I don't want to risk losing the seats if they throw them back into inventory. But I also don't want to risk not getting the seat by waiting for the return to come up.

mtkeller

I'm pretty sure we've had reports of people booking as a one-way and then calling in to add the return when it opened up without too much issue. Sounds like you're trying to book at 330 out, so a dummy return might not be possible, but if you're booking a bit closer, it might be easier to book a dummy return (using open jaw if necessary) and have it replaced later.