gkbiiii

I saw that South African had this route and it was only 50K PP, RT in J. Is this possible to book and if so, how do you do it?

newyorklondon

I'm not sure SA does fly that route. IAD to DSS (Dakar's new airport) yes (three times a week I think), but not JFK-DSS.

But what you should do is look up the route in the same way you would look up an NH redemption: use the UA search tool to look for Saver Award space. Then phone up VS and ask for a redemption on the specific flights you want. As ever, this is an exceptionally rare procedure for the average VS phone agent, so it may take 2,3,4+ tries to get someone experienced enough to do it.

One thing - because of the recent airport change in Dakar, you might want to look for redemption on the IAD-JNB route (which is the route which stops at DSS), as not all search processes are giving accurate results to DSS.

Good luck, and do report back!

gkbiiii

Thank you for great advice, it works well using UA and searching using "one-way" routing!

newyorklondon

Glad to hear it! Good luck!

seychellesbound

delete

mnscout

Finding award space for IAD-DSS and farther to JNB is not hard at all, but sometime this year they started adding the YQ.
I know it wasn't the case last year because I did manage to do a dummy booking, and the taxes amounted to just a few dollars. This time around they are north of $600.
I know it's still a great deal for a J class redemption, but that unicorn quality is gone.
30% American Express Transfer Bonus to Virgin Atlantic and Why Go for It: Part 2 – One Unicorn Redemption on South African Airways

Mttrnd

EDIT: wrong thread

Quarantine

I'm trying to use Virgin Atlantic miles to book a flight on South African Airlines from JFK -> JNB (and eventually JNB -> TNR) sometime late Aug 2019 (return early Sep 2019). This is my first time using Virgin Atlantic miles to book partner awards, and I was surprised that UA.com is showing nearly zilch results for either business OR economy, even nearly 1 year away.

Any tips on how I might be able to book this award? I started looking at ExpertFlyer, but I haven't found it to be any useful. :/

I'm open to other creative routings as well, including flying from IAD.

Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to render!

PaulMSN

I tried to book an award in first on DL, ORD-PHX rt, using the VS search engine, but it tells me that it will cost 90,000 miles. Is this a bug, am I doing something wrong or is that the actual price for a FC US domestic trip? Thanks for any help -- I've only used VS miles for one flight several years ago by phone, so I'm not at all familiar with the process.

newyorklondon

It sounds like you're booking a connecting flight (via SLC?), which is never a good use of VS miles on DL. VS calculates redemptions via sectors (45k per sector), rather than overall distance.

cuzzybro

Apologies if this has been repeated: but following on from the news over the past two weeks that SQ has released First Class Suites availability to certain *A partners (seems to be max 1 seat per flight) on certain long haul routes to partners, I was tempted to see if Virgin could possibly also access this unicorn space too, and to my surprise they could and it was 100% bookable non-phantom space lol. This is despite the following stated on the VS website for SQ redemptions: "Spending miles: Redemptions in Business Class and First Class on their A380-800, 777-300ER, and A350-900 aircraft types are not available."

I ended up hurriedly using VS miles to book three separate one ways in Suites Class on the A380, 1x Ex-Auckland (AKL-SIN), and 2x ex-Singapore (SIN-AKL) to link up some other bookings. Looking forward to checking out the private room in Changi ^.
Each one way was 65k miles one way (I transferred US AMEX miles during the recent 30% bonus, so 50K one way - epic deal!), and incurred nominal taxes for the bookings, ~40 NZD ex. Auckland and ~80 NZD ex. Singapore. SQ specific PNRs check out on the SQ website, and reservations are ticketed and confirmed.

Call times on the three separate occasions were: 6 minutes (seriously); 32 minutes; and 17 minutes. Happy hunting!

Jma12

Booked SQ F for 65k miles as well from SIN-AKL with only 57$ USD fee. Look forward to my first SQ F suite flight!!

Quarantine

Is Virgin Atlantic able to book award flights on SA Airlink? Specifically, I'm looking for JNB -> TNR reward flights, but I'm not sure how to go about searching for availability since it's not showing on UA's website.

However, on the award chart (https://www.virginatlantic.com/gb/en...n-airways.html), it did list "South Africa – Southern Africa
(Botswana/ Lesotho/ Madagascar/ Malawi/ Mozambique/ Namibia/ Swaziland/ Zambia/ Zimbabwe)".

Just wondering if anyone has any experience booking this flight!

qofmiwok

50,000 from AMS to SEA plus about $260, for June.

s0ssos

Anybody know if you can book on Hawaiian for a trip from the US to Asia? I don't see a listing on the VS website, so it would have to be two separate awards?