ankomonkey

It does have the following under the domestic chart:

"International Travel

Round trip redemptions on International flights from:

15,000 miles in Economy
30,000 miles in Business Class
40,000 miles in First Class

Destinations include: Japan, USA, Hawaii, Germany, France, China, India and Guam"

So it looks like UK-JP redemptions are no longer available if the included list is exhaustive rather than just a selection.

We were trying to get my wife a return UK-JP ticket in any class recently and gave up as there was no availability, and the costs of calling repeatedly to submit new dates was adding up... Useless!

geclub1

I have a copy saved as of 15JUL15. PM me your email address and I will forward you a copy.


The chart as of 15JUL15 had the same list of destinations, but then in the next paragraph, they provide an example itin of LHR-TYO-SIN return.

mintcilantro

i had saved an image as well
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/membe...chart-ana.html


IS there any special trick to booking ANA awards with virgin. I can see award space on united/aeroplan but the virgin offices in uk/us/hong kong cannot see anything. I have done HUCA atleast 3 times for each of these locations

nufnuf77

Thanks, I expect availability to be an issue, but I shall be very flexible.

mintcilantro posted the link to it, so no need, but thank you so much for the offer. Do you know a reliable way to check ANA availability on VS without having to spend a day on the call?


Thanks, this is really helpful.

Is 22000 miles the max I can do? I think LHR-TYO-SEA should be fine, but LHR-TYO-SYD or LHR-TYO-JFK are over this 22k limit which is a shame.

And I promise this is a last question, but what happens to amount of miles required where ANA only offers business on some legs of the otherwise First class journey, eg LHR(First)-TYO-(Business)HKG. Can this be issued as 1 ticket for F miles on VS, or does it have to be split to 2 separate bookings?

mintcilantro

i don't mind the questions but i don't know the answers either. I tried an award booking yesterday to find out if stopovers/open jaws are allowed. I don't trust teh agent i talked to who said open jaws are not allowed. He wanted to add extra 15k miles for the ITM to NRT segment I tried to add

in the end they couldn't confirm the award availability so I didn't book it. Do let us know what you find out.

geclub1

The chart I have goes up to 34,000 miles.

nufnuf77

PM sent, interested in this because doing LHR TYO SYD r/t would be interesting!

UA Fan

Here is something I observed while trying to book DL awards with VS miles. I found the flights I wanted on dl.com and then called VS. Tried to book DFW-LAX-NRT. The agent mentioned that the DFW-LAX segment was not available. I then tried just DFW-LAX on dl.com and it did not come out available at low level. So if you encounter such issues, it might be because of married segments.

I asked the VS agent to not do a segment by segment search and try searching DFW-NRT and that also did not come up available. I then went to af.com and that DL combination was not showing as available. So not only does DL have married segments, they allow them just with DL miles. I guess before calling VS, try checking af.com for the DL flights you want.

mintcilantro

Great point. In my case, virgin could see teh DL domestic and international segment but wanted to charge me extra for the domestic segment. At that point I gave up and decided to book with AF instead. Maybe I just got an incompetent agent but I just couldn't put up with all the games VS plays. I've called the US # and I always get british accent agents and they are generally neither competent nor helpful. They are creative for sure. They come up with new reasons everytime why they can't do the booking or can't connect segments or can't make changes to an award.

zimne

Called VS today regarding the Air China booking issue, the rep advised that the last memo about this was dated 28/09, and ALL redemptions on CA are still blocked. No timeframe available on when this issued could be fixed yet.

mobilemario

My experience using VS miles on SQ:

ANA's website showing availability in J.
CPH-SIN, various dates.
1st call(UK office) nothing available.
2nd call(UK office) nothing.
3rd call(HKG office) date requested, 24h wait time. Next day had a call saying no availability...
4th call(UK office) finally some hope! Got a booking ref no and asked to ring back. I called today to be told that the booking request came back as unconfirmed from SQ.

These are the same flights you can book with ANA miles instantly!
So there you go. The true value of VS miles

geclub1

I would not mark this against VS so readily. ANA website has seen some phantom award availabilities ever since the web upgrade in April.
Since VS has actually submitted long-sell and the space came back as unconfirmed, I would lean towards that it is actually phantom space.

Nottingham Nick

The true value of VS miles for partner booking, maybe.
They still offer good value for flights on VS metal IMHO, just wish they would sort this partner debacle out.

Nick

mintcilantro

I had the same expeirence trying to redeem on NH flights. I confirmed availability on UA and AC websites.

I think most people in US are used to not paying scam charges that you end up having to pay if you fly VS using VS miles. Elsewhere people view miles as a discount coupon rather than a mostly free flight. So you probably see some value on redeeming on VS but I don't.

Nottingham Nick

Good point about the charges, but we have been paying YQ on VS and BA for so long that we have got used to them.

Nick