98h524. Just to let you know that I managed to get two Business Class returns from LHR-PEK for September using VS miles a couple of weeks ago. Took a couple of calls to VS and we originally requested First, but was indeed 63000 miles and £874 for us both in taxes. A bargain!

Excellent. That's hugely helpful to hear you had success. I was originally looking at September as well, but might try next spring instead.

Nottingham Nick - would it be worthwhile adding a Wiki Post at the top of this thread so we can add all the successful partner redemptions and get an easy overview? For example with airline, route, month and miles + taxes spent. It seems we have quite a few already in this thread.

Good idea - leave it with me to sort out when I get a few minutes. ^

Nick

looked into booking atlanta-dublin on delta economy, I found the availability using alaska airlines and called up virgin. They were able to find the same dates for 60K virgin miles and $45.60, I asked about business class, and after awhile he came back with 100K and around the same amount in fees...I then asked about atlanta to rome and after awhile he found nothing. Even though I saw availability on alaska airlines with delta I decided I had enough.

The reason I have lots of Virgin Airmiles is that I wanted to use their service to Sydney. I've used it in the past and it was OK.
So now they do not fly to Sydney.
I rang their call centre, last week and the week before, and the 2 people I spoke to were unable to get me to anywhere in Australia on any airline in late Jan/early Feb 2015. . Not in any class. None of their partner airlines showed any availability whatsoever.
Completely useless.
I asked them what I should do. "Keep calling back" was their unhelpful advice.
Very, very disappointing.

Keep in mind that January/February is summer time in Australia & it's still school holidays. This would have an affect on availability.

ANA
 

Has anyone managed to use points for a premium cabin booking on ANA LHR to Tokyo, and if so was it an easy process? Thanks

Well, based on this post (and after trying unsuccessfully to find out what the point schedule was for these awards), I ended up calling VS FC about booking a one-way PER-SYD - at the very least I wanted to see how many points it took. I must have spoken with the most clueless rep in history: first he tried to convince me that you couldn't use FC points to book VA tix. When I would have none of it, he tried telling me that VA doesn't fly between PER and SYD - righto... then what have I been flying more than once in the last 18 months? Finally he insisted that a VA award ticket required a R/T, and that it would be 20000 points for my chosen itinerary. Ok, let's go with that then. But wait! there was no award room at all for two weeks in each direction around my very flexible dates (meanwhile I was looking at VA's award calendar, and there was lots of basic award availability for every day of the two weeks I chose). After holding the line for 40 minutes to achieve this amazing reservation experience, I gave up. I'll try another time, but I have to say: why even bother advertising partner flights availability if you aren't allowed to book directly online and the reservation reps are so clueless? Do I have to call at certain times of the day or is there any other trick to getting a carbon-based life form at the other end of the phone? I have Silver (a freebie from a few months ago), if it makes any difference.

The golden rule when you come across this experience is to immediately hang-up, call again and hopefully get to speak to a different person.

Right you are, and I've done HUACA many times, but I just couldn't stay on hold for another 40 minutes. I'll try again soon, but is there some better time of day? With some airlines, calling at certain times of day makes it more likely that you get the better agents from certain call centres.

Was able to redeem on Virgin America no problem for this Saturday. Quick call to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club and they put me on hold whilst they contacted Virgin America. No Main Cabin left so went for First Class ORD-SFO Return for 40,000 miles. Seemed very painless and relatively easy compared to what I have heard from others.

Booked one way SYD-LAX on VA in business. Had to wait 24 hours for confirmation but painless. A little confusion about acceptability of O/W awards but apparently there's a note at the bottom of the screen.

VX Redemption
 

Booked a RT award SFO-LAS, agents seem to be able to check real time now as they didn't put me on hold but only main cabin select was available for both the outbound and return. Checked the seat map afterwards and main cabin was not even half full. Had to transfer membership rewards and those moved instantly.

Tried booking ANA from west coast (SJC/SFO/LAX) to DEL through NRT. The agent said they couldn't even see flights from SJC-NRT, so couldn't book it. Asked about the SFO then and the agent said he had to manually request availability and it would take 24 hours for ANA to respond, so calling back tomorrow.

Definitely the worst booking experience I've had.

I think I need to attempt this now after today's announcement regarding VS cutting NRT.

Has anyone had any success?