any guesses as to when VX flies its last flight as a separate carrier?
 

I'm wondering if i should just burn all my VX miles before then.

I've never ever flown Alaska

Will be in 2018. They are targeting early in the year. Elevate is ending at the end of 2017. I just used up all of mine on a couple upcoming trips. If you find good redemption options, go ahead and use them up. Otherwise, they will end up with Alaska at the beginning of 2018.

thanks for the advice. Thats kind of what i figured.

Sad actually as initially everyone thought they would still operate as 2 brands

Actually, I think nobody really thought Alaska would be sending checks indefinitely to Richard Branson for the Virgin brand, other than Richard Branson himself.

All elevate points converted early 2018; last flight and the brand to retired sometime early 2019.

So you'll fly Virgin America flights and earn Alaska Airline mileage plan miles starting and through 2018 until they get a single reservation system (fall 2018) and then "retire the brand" in 2019. I'm guessing retire the brand coincides with a last VX flight... but that is speculation on my side.

Another thing I would add is that this acquisition has been going very fast compared to other airline mergers; so any surprises will probably be sooner than later.

I don't know if you ever fly transcontinental flights, but converting elevate points to Alaska mileage plan miles, and then redeeming low level Virgin America First transcontinental flights (25,000 MP miles) has been a great way to get value out of your elevate points.

example of this?

You mean, first convert to MP?

Yes, first search Alaska Airlines award bookings to see if you have a flight with the 25,000 award in first class. If you find one that works for you then convert 19,300 (or as close to that as needed) elevate points to 25,090 Alaska Airline mileage plan miles. Then redeem the award. I've done this a couple times and it's been a very good deal.

For instance on March 10th there was an Alaska award for 25K (and $5.60) for a Virgin America #26 SFO-JFK first flight. Redeemed award and took flight. and it was only ~19,300 elevate points.

You'll need to have an Mileage Plan account set up first; and you should make sure it's linked to your elevate account.

Just be sure it is available and that is what you want before you do the transfer. The vast majority of VX operated flights are many more points with MileagePlan than they are with Elevate and Main Cabin Select is not available at all. There are some good deals with MileagePlan but every flight I have looked at for my travel dates have been 20-60,000 miles with Mileageplan--especially on holiday weekends--while I could get 8,000 point tickets in MCS with Elevate or 3,000 in Y for short and medium haul flights from SFO to DEN/SAN etc.

Also as the year goes on, you can't be sure whether your flight will be operated by VX or AS.

Yes, we're really in that sweet spot of being able to shop both programs. To bad all good things eventually end.

awesome find guys, thanks much.

I'm all set as the award i want is available.,

however, right now, i transfered the miles VX to MP, and its been 30 minutes and nothing yet

Mine took nearly 24 hours.

answered in another post, but as long as names match 100%, the transfer will take less than 10 minutes

If they dont match, they look into it manually

On VX, my last name is YOUNG JR

On AS, my last name is YOUNG, suffix is JR, so wasnt working

AS corrected my name on my profile and its working great now

Fly one-way in F - award was 38,000 VX points

the same flight (codeshare AS), was 25,000 AS points

19,250 VX points = 25,025 AS points

So I actually ended up with 2 F tickets for the price of 1 VX award

I'm wanting to fly first class on a VX plane in May 2018. I have zero desire to fly first class on an Alaska plane. Is this going to be possible or are all aircraft going to be Alaska by then?

By May, 2018, it is likely that some but not all of the VX planes will be reconfigured to the new AS standard.