tbridge

(First post, terrified I'm going to get the etiquette wrong, please go easy on me)

I am midway through a DCA <> MEL trip, where the SYD <> MEL legs are on Virgin Australia. On the way back, I fly from MEL to SYD at 6:30pm on April 4th and spend the night in Sydney before flying DL41 to LAX and onward, and I'd love to get that bumped back earlier in the day so I could get dinner in Sydney at a reasonable hour instead of at 9pm. I've called Delta about this and they're not seeing any availability, but Virgin's still selling tickets for the earlier flights. I know that could mean they're oversold, etc, but I am looking for advice on getting into Sydney earlier in the day.

Is standby an option with Virgin Australia? I tried calling Virgin, but neither my Delta Ticket # nor my Delta Reservation # work with their Customer Service numbers.

mot29

I recently flew some VA flights - PEr-MEL and MEL-SYD, but booked directly with VA. I found them to be very accomodating. You might call DL and they should be able to give you the VA PNR and then call VA?

obscure2k

Welcome to Flyertalk and the Delta Forum tbridge. We are generally a friendly and helpful group who try to answer your questions or direct you to the appropriate Forum
Obscure2k
Delta Moderator

Duke787

+1 on this. It's unclear from your OP when your outbound SYD - MEL flight is but if that hasn't occurred, you could also chat with the agents at VA while at the airport and see what's feasible.

upnorth

I too am planning a trip to Australian during their summer and want to visit Melbourne, Cairns. Would doing a US-SYD return and then local VA booking to fly to MEL, Cairns etc., be an easier and better option? No doubt the baggage allowance may be lower in Australia.

mb752

I actually just came back from a trip to MEL a couple of weeks ago. What I did was book DL to SYD, and then I booked Qantas business class SYD-MEL using BA miles. DL to SYD was a lot cheaper than a DL+VA booking to MEL, and Qantas was pretty nice for the short hop. They have very nice domestic J lounges. Also a very good transfer experience international to domestic at SYD, I could go through security at the international terminal and then take a bus that dropped me airside in the domestic terminal. That only works if you have miles with some oneworld airline of course, not worth it at all with a cash booking for QF J. Slight advantage with this is that miles bookings are relatively flexible, and QF seem to release most seats for mileage bookings on day of departure, so if my incoming flight to SYD would have been delayed, I could probably have found a later onward flight to MEL. (On the way back I had a night in Sydney, so missing the connection wasn't really a risk there.)

I vaguely recall I did a similar self-transfer a few years ago with some other local airline (jetstar maybe?) and that was a little bit less smooth than QF, IIRC I had to take a train beween terminals at SYD landside. Don't know if VA has a international - domestic shuttle at SYD.

upnorth

Last 20 years I have been with Sky team because I live in a Delta Hub (Minneapolis). I will probably need to buy tickets between Sydney-Melbourne-Cairns-Sydney on Qantas or VA. I used to fly Qantas when my home city was MEL. Unfortunately, Qantas is not part of Sky Team, but I have no problem flying Qantas. It is a great airline no doubt.

mb752

Unfortunately there isn't really a good domestic SkyTeam partner in Australia anymore, and DL and VA partnership seems to have mostly ended as well - seems you can still book VA flights via DL on some routes, but no more mileage earning etc. No idea if DL would through-check luggage to VA on separate tickets.
In any case, one thing to watch out for in SYD is the transfer between domestic and international terminals, which are quite far apart. QF has a domestic checkin and shuttle transfer at the international terminal, and I think maybe VA has something similar (but I'd double check on that). Pretty sure none of the other airlines have that, so with those you'd have to take the train. Not a huge deal, but I'd budget a little bit more time if you plan on doing that.

upnorth

Thanks for pointing that out. I was not aware that the terminals were apart. In this case, without any doubt, I am going to book on QF.