UASPG

Quite depressed after reading this thread. So far, I accumulated 110K+ miles and I am not sure that I will ever be able to use them.

I usually travel between the West coast of the U.S. and SE Asia and don't even want to think about the fustration that will come with the calls to find award BC tickets on partner airlines.

Are BC tickets from LAX or SFO to LHR the only painless award redemption option, when you are based on the West coast?

98h524

Just want to report what I consider a major success after bemoaning the problems of booking partner reward flights upthread.

Last night I managed to book two returns on Air China on the LHR-PEK route in First for 75k miles + £500 taxes and charges per person in April 2015. Reservation has confirmed and ticketed this morning into fare class 'O' (First reward seats on Air China and some other *Alliance carriers).

I found that the ANA reward search engine displayed the availability really well and Air China has really opened up availability on this route in both First and Business (63k). So if anyone is looking for availability with any of the other *Alliance partners like Air New Zealand, Singapore or SAA, this might be the way to do it.

These are £6k tickets, so in the hypthetical world where I could and would pay cash for the flights, it is over 7p per mile worth of value!

Very happy indeed!

Nottingham Nick

^ Excellent result - thanks for sharing.

Nick

LaikaSpacedog

Amazing and great to hear! Thanks so much for updating on this, it's something that will hopefully be very useful for me with a trip or two next year.

awatts

I had the same problem last Feb. that this thread opened with - booking miles flights on SQ with VS miles. Impossible and I called with no help (sorry, "computer say no").

So I paid for two return SQ J class tickets, LHR-BNE when they had a seat sale.

Now over 6 weeks on, SQ/VS have not credited the miles. Well not quite. The LHR-SIN out was credited, then mysteriously the remainder of the trip (SIN-BNE; BNE-SIN; SIN-LHR) have NOT been credited.

VA FC have acknowledged the receipt by recorded mail of the original boarding cards, with the VS FC numbers clearly on them, as well as e- tickets receipts, etc, but they say, in an email, they are "waiting for SQ to verify we flew"????

This happened to me once before and I finally lost the will to follow it up eventually. This time I need the tier points (then I did not).

What a shambles.

Anyone listening out there?

zimne

Managed to burn 75K VS miles for a CA F return ticket worth 6K quid.Took about 10 minutes on the phone and the reservation was confirmed within minutes after I gave the agent my preferred dates (availability checked using United) and ticketed promptly the next morning.
Taxes/Fees/Surcharges read as follows:
Fare GBP 0.00
Taxes/Fees/Charges/Carrier Imposed Surcharges YR300.00 GB170.00 XT58.96
Total GBP 528.96

PSNGR CREDIT CARD FEE GBP 7.93

Form of Payment ; AX*********** AMOUNT RECEIVED GBP 536.89

The strange thing is you can’t pull up the reservation on VS website using the PNR provided.

dramzan98

Hey everyone. Wanted to report success with ANA.

Burned 120k on a JFK-NRT redemption in First for mid June of 2015 on a 13 day trip. Business was also available for redemption. I had to check ANA's own award tool to come up with dates that worked. The flying club team put me on a hold after they had the seats but could't calculate the taxes for me. I was given a confirmation number and the same rep called me back in about 20 minutes to charge me.

All in: YQ 586 , SW 19.70 , XT 22.40 for a total of USD 628.10 in taxes. I'm okay with it!
Good luck all!

rcurry01

Was that round trip?
VA does not put the ANA award chart on their website. From your data point of one, does the ANA Milage based award chart accurately reflect the same number of miles that VA Flying Club charges?

ankomonkey

Congratulations! Can I ask how many seats you booked? I have 270k+ of VS miles and have been checking ANA availability recently. It looks like one seat is possible fairly often, you may get 2 on an odd occasion, any more than that I've yet to see (on the LHR-HND route anyway)...

dramzan98

Thanks! Only one seat.

Yup, it was round trip.

I don't know why VS pulled the ana redemption chart from the US site but it's still available on the UK site here: http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/gb/en...n-airways.html I'm guessing that this chart is still in effect.

Concerto

Am I right in thinking that you can only redeem on the LHR-PEK route with Air China, and the rest of the network is off limits? And is it really 75k for a return in 1st and not a one way? If it is return, it is quite a good deal!

98h524

Yes. That's what it says on the VS website and the agent also mentioned this when I called up to book the LHR-PEK flights. It does seem a little odd that you cannot tag a domestic or intra-Asia flight onto the PEK flights. VS obviously fly to PVG, but I don't see how this effects anything.

It is indeed only 75k VS Miles return, which is half the Avios BA charge for First returns to PEK.

Concerto

Amazing! I should really do this, but the only problem is I don't have any real need to go to Peking and no real desire to go there either!

posexec

I have been lucky enough to use VS points to reach LAX and SYD this year but have struggled again to get anything with ANZ.

Nice to see that the VS Flying Club site has been updated with a little more availability info but it's still an arcane process trying to use any partner airlines and having to wait 24hrs for a reply only to be told no.

dhoward

Anyone have any success booking DL LHR-LAX in business? I can't make out from the website if it is allowed and how many miles as it states:

From UK -USA (Heathrow-Atlanta, New York, Boston, Detroit, Minneaplois & Manchester-Atlanta) 90,000
From USA to UK/Europe 100,000

No mention of UK to LAX.

Do they charge fuel surcharges departing UK?

They have much better availability than VS for the dates I want (assuming the availability using VS is the same as a Standard award on DL).

Many thanks