FlyerTalk Forums - Redeeming with Virgin Blue

Well as no-one ever responded to this or to earlier posts on the same subject, I am guessing not many people have redeemed Emirates miles for Virgin Blue flights - so this is my experience....

If you don’t want to plough through the whole story, go to the end….

We had just over 32,000 Skywards miles each, 31,000 from just one Emirates return flight in economy from London to Sydney return in 2007, plus 1,000 from two car hires each. We wanted to fly SYD - HBA (10,000 miles), HBA - ADL (12,000 miles), ADL - SYD (12,000 miles). The mileage chart is here - http://www.skywards.com/partner_deta...tcm:431-479951. Obviously that totals more than 32,000, but we could have bought the extra 2,000 miles we needed for US$50 each.

Given that no-one on here seemed to have redeemed Virgin Blue awards through Emirates, it occurred to me that it was unlikely that call centre staff would be much help, so I started by completing the online form (bottom of this page - http://www.skywards.com/Spending_Miles.aspx?SkinID=8). I asked only for the first flight and stressed that it was one way, completing some of the info on the form with dummy dates as you can't complete it without return dates. The form was submitted on 29 September and I got a positive response on 4 October. However, the response, which came from Australia, only gave a very short time to contact them to arrange ticketing. I never actually worked out how long as I've no idea what Zulu time is!! Also it required payment of taxes of A$11.27 each. Hubby rang our local Emirates office in Manchester but got the distinct impression that they didn't know what to do. However, they took his credit card number and said they would issue tickets shortly. Silence. So on 12 October we emailed them again and got a response on 17 October saying that the booking had been cancelled as payment was “not collected in time”! Fortunately, the flights were still available so hubby rang again and we got confirmation of the flights straight away. His credit card was never charged.

In the meantime, we started trying to arrange the next leg of the journey, HBA – ADL. There are no direct flights, so we completed the online form explaining we needed connecting flights, but as Virgin Blue’s mileage chart allowed flights between the two (and Virgin Blue’s own website had half a dozen flights a day via either Melbourne, Sydney or Canberra), it shouldn’t be a problem. The reply, four days later, said there were no direct flights available!

By this time it had become apparent that most responses took a week or so and that with the difficulties of sorting a connecting flight, we were going to have to bite the bullet and ring to sort it out. Over the next few days I made a number of calls, I can’t recall how many. The usual agent roulette. I eventually gave up on the connecting flights and decided to try for two separate flights – HBA – MEL (8,000 miles) and MEL – ADL (also 8,000 miles). I was trying to decipher our choices rather than book what was available straight off and it seemed there was something of a theme emerging. Whenever you rang, only the very first flight requested was available. So if you said, which flights are available on 14 March, the response would be only the 6am. If you rang back and spoke to a different agent and said is the 11am flight on 14 March available, the answer would be yes.

The last of the HBA – MEL/MEL – ADL enquiry calls was made and I got someone in the Dubai call centre. He put something of a spanner in the works though by saying that the taxes would be Dirhams 350 (about £60) which was not a whole lot cheaper than buying a fare via Virgin Blue’s website. I went away to think about it!

As I now had almost of my ducks lined up, I rang one final time. Given the time of day I rang the Australian call centre (using Skype) and got through to a very helpful lass who confirmed all my flights and advised that if you book through Australia, they do not charge any fees whatsoever.

We didn’t quite have enough points for all eight flights (4 x 8,000 from one account; 12,000 + 2 x 10,000 from the other), so had to buy just one from Virgin Blue. But a total cost of £65 for them all seems a bargain to me!

Top tips:

Only ask about one flight per call.

Book your flights through the Australian call centre to avoid fees.

Hope this is of use to some of you…..