iahphx

Jared at the Onlinetravelreview figured out this obscure loophole today:

http://www.onlinetravelreview.com/20...es-round-trip/

He suggested transferring SPG points to fund a Virgin account, but you'll see in the notes that I think it's a better deal to fund the account with AMEX Membership Rewards points (and you can usually get an AMEX card with a high sign-up bonus pretty easily if you need one).

I just want to see how this works in practice, and make sure there are no crazy fees (as you may know, foreign airlines sometimes impose crazy redemption fees).

But if it works, this is probably THE BEST way to book an interisland ticket, given the current nose-bleed fares.

I don't think Virgin offers one-way awards, but we'll have to wait for details on this. Also, I don't know if you could book two HA segments, instead of an actual roundtrip. Like say you're flying from the Mainland into HNL, and leaving for the mainland from KOA, and you want to fly HNL-OGG, stop, and then fly OGG-KOA for 6000 Virgin miles.

All in all, a very interesting development. If there are no redemption fees, everyone in Hawaii should max out the AMEX sign-up bonuses!

EDIT: Jared did some more checking and, indeed, there are NO redemption fees associated with this reward (you have to pay the small TSA fee). You can also apparently take any 2 HA flights (no need to do an actual roundtrip). This is an extraordinary deal for anyone with access to AMEX Membership Rewards points (pretty much any American eligible for a credit card) and a need for 2 interisland flights.

Pentech

Wow, great find! Thanks for the heads up on using MR points (instead of SPG points), as this seems to be a better value.

Sorry for the newbie question, but how does one book an inter-island award ticket on Virgin Atlantic? From their website, I don't see an option to pick using partner airlines.

Thanks!

jeelele

FYI, this find was originally posted in this blog post on October 30.

iahphx

Well, I guess we should all start reading Awardguru as well. There are certainly a lot of these frequent flyer blogs in existence these days -- it's becoming like Groupon clones.

Regardless of who first discovered it, it's a great trick.

philemer

See this thread too: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/virgi...nup-bonus.html

We got 47K miles with the BofA card and have already booked two interisland trips. It's 6K for a o/w or r/t. Beats the heck out of HA miles (7.5K or 15K).

The BIG problem is you have to call V. Atlantic and deal with a noisy call center. But it worked out fine. $2.50 or $5.00 in fees. Nice.

iahphx

Are they using the same award bucket as everyone else: like can you first go on continental.com to see what's available?

I only needed one inter-island segment for an upcoming Hawaiian vacation, and I was so appalled by the fares that I was going to redeem 5000 CO/UA miles, but the only flights available were at very inconvenient (early morning/late night) times. So I used some PenFed points instead.

For 3,000 miles, I'd tolerate more inconvenient flight times, especially if I need a bunch of tickets for a family trip.

slippahs

Wirelessly posted (iPhone-ETOPS: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

This award is not a new find; has been around for years now. Hope the publicity doesn't draw attention for VS to raise the award level...

saacman5033

Usually I can get anything that shows up on the CO website but I just made a redemption yesterday where the agent had a hard time finding what I was finding on the CO site. Hope this does not indicate availability changes in the future.

BTW, you can't book a one way for 3,000 miles.

+1

azepine00

For many years indeed. I tried to book it a few years ago (and also intra NZ redemption) and dealing with VS was a pain - it was much easier using UA miles. Perhaps things are different now.

bitachu

I just heard about this..hope this last longer so I can get some miles into VS

turkeyRIOO

Things are not different now. HA basically refuses to release inventory to VS. It is a long process find inventory on EF or call HA to get D inventory for F. Call back to VS which then submits a reservation for confirmation to HA. HA then arbitrarily rejects the VS reservation. I even did a 3 way call with HA and VS and got nowhere. This appears to be a phantom award.

jeelele

In my experience, VS award inventory for HA does not match with EF or Continental.com. I have observed that as long as there 4+ award seats available, VS has been able to give me the HA award seats. Needless to say, those flights are usually at such odd hours that you don't want to tick-off you wife/girl friend and ruin your vacation.

Regardless, it still remains a good value to those who don't mind early morning or late evening flights.

bitachu

I wonder if Virgin atlantic ending their relationship with continental will affect searching for these fares..i haven't tried yet but hope to sometime soon...

bitachu

Uh oh..why don't i see the award redemption 6k in this link anymore?

http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/us...bfSubmit1.x=32

pelkrum

I tried to book interislands flights in Hawaii using frying club mileages.
I was told from many posts on the internet that I can book a round trip flight with just 6000 mileages.
However, the representative told me that they charge 15,000 mileages for round trip. I tried it between HNL and LIH(KAUAI) & between HNL and ITO(HILO). I called them up three times and all of them told me that they charges
15,000 miles for round trip.
When I looked into Hawaiian airline web site, I can see 15,000 mileage reward ticket. As you know, 15,000 mileage is the minimum in Hawaiian airline.
Could you let me know why they charge more than 6000 miles?
Do you have any experiences on that?
Thanks.