roberto99

Almost never.

Teddy Ruxpin

Can someone tell me if I'm mistaken with my thoughts here. Appreciate the input.

ANA through their program charges 85k for business RT during the time I want to go with my wife. 170,000 miles total.
VA charges 95k or 190,000 miles total.
I will have a child under two, so that is approximately 10% of fare on ANA (safe bet being $1,000) and 10% of fare in miles on VA or 9,500 miles.
I believe fuel charges are the same for booking through both, so I'll ignore that.
Therefore, ANA would cost $1,000 with a savings of 29,500 points. If I value the points at 2 cents per point, the cost is $1,000 (lapchild fare) for ANA vs $590 with VA (the cost of extra points).

The positives with booking with ANA are I get 20 extra days of calendar, and allegedly from what I read here that ANA holds back seats for their members, a better chance at finding seats from my preferred close airport. We would likely not buy a seat for our kid on the positioning flight in this scenario. If we had to connect to a further airport, is it likely we'd buy a seat.

So with the above facts, does this seem like a push on who to book through if business class is the goal?

Thanks,

blitzen

From the ANA website
Infant passengers who do not require their own seat will be able to use flight awards by paying 10% of the required flight award mileage for the same boarding class as the accompanying adult. In this instance, the infant must be registered as an award user. Alternatively, an infant fare ticket can be purchased separately for the same boarding class as the accompanying adult.
https://www.ana.co.jp/en/us/amc/refe.../int/zone.html

Teddy Ruxpin

Thanks Blitzen. I must have read the wrong section when I looked into this some time ago.

It would appear this is very close to even in many ways if booking J.

Was I right about fuel charges being passed along when booking with VA?

I also need to figure out what this means. Think I figured it out.

blitzen

I think fuel surcharges etc are the same. the "has to be an award member" probably refers to you add the baby to your account as a family member.
Beside being cheaper (unless VA has a 30% transfer bonus) ANA has only advantages. Earlier access to seats, supposedly seats only shown to members and free changes in dates (and normally quickly done online - not sure if that applies if you have a lap infant).
Only other advantage of VA is a recurring transfer bonus (usually 30%) / more transfer partners (citi) and if you can swing it First is actually cheaper on Virgin than on ANA (but here the extra 20 days might make ANA the only option depending on route and time of the year).
Good luck and enjoy Japan (btw get a Suica Card , consider the JR Pass and use volunteer guides (free beside paying for their train/subway ticket and buying lunch))

Teddy Ruxpin

Ya, with finding two seats in first being up for grabs and undependable, it appears my stress would be much less looking for 2 business seats with the extra booking window. A clean itinerary with an almost 2 year old on the date of travel is a big positive.

I did in fact add everyone just now as a family member so that wasn't bad at all. I have enough MR to make ANA work so that's great.

Appreciate the extra Japan tips. I'm sure I'll be back on this forum or ANA's when booking window opens. It seems to me the safe route is to book the outbound with a dummy return when a valid RT opens then pay no change fee to change the return to a more desirable date.

Teddy Ruxpin

From ANA's site. This is good to know as his 2nd birthday is the end of the trip. Since we'd be leaving before he turns two, I think I could return without issue a day or so later than his birthday. Might need the flexibility. Will check ANA forum.

blitzen

Yes when I booked first I booked the outbound the day it opened up and at the same time a return for the same day. Then 10 days later I moved it ?just as it opened up) to the new day. All online no problems

seigex

I have my 3rd VS/NH LAX-NRT F flight booked for christmas to new year.. I just noticed that there's a mile boost option that for $525.12 I get almost 46k miles. I know purchasing miles is generally a bad idea, especially on boosts, but this comes out to 1.2cpp, and is half the way to another $20k+ NH F award. Are there any downsides I'm not seeing or maybe my math is off a bit?

zedkyuu

Interesting. Too bad it's via points.com, though; doesn't look like I'll be able to get 5x points on my Amex Plat as a result.

seigex

After doing research (read: googling), and looking at it again it's a 40% bonus that's been in the blogs for a couple months now. If you boost in the UK, it appears they're getting about .8cpp instead of 1.2cpp which is much nicer. But still seems like a good deal and I can boost an NH flight I had a few months ago (I read up to 6 months back) which will yield just under another NH F ticket for about $1000.

zedkyuu

I did a little searching and found a suggestion to call their customer service line to request the miles. In theory, this would allow you to both be charged in pounds and also from Virgin Atlantic themselves instead of points.com, which would theoretically allow you to collect the travel points rewards (5x on Amex Plat, 3x on CSR, that kind of thing). However, when I called, they said that they would only be able to do it for Virgin Atlantic flights and not partner flights.

Looking at the "small print" section of the Miles Booster page, I see:

So it would seem our NH flights don't count. The fact the site gives me the option via points.com to do it looks like an oversight. That said, I think I'm going to try to do it anyway.

ssg10

I have not booked ANA first for N. America to Tokyo since last year and today i saw availability on united but VS agent told me they dont see it. Is this common these days?
Before, if it was available in united, it iwas available in VS too. Thanks

Jerkstore

That happened to me earlier in the year and it was very frustrating. VS told me to use a program called ExpertFlyer and I said I was and am staring at open space--we were both flumoxxed.

What I found is the best bet is to search on ANA itself and see if they categorize the award as ANA only or star alliance award. That should be clearer--you want the star alliance award category.

gengar

These posts probably belong in the https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/virg...ub-points.html thread.

Partner availability should be partner availability, but sometimes UA will show phantom availability. It can only be proven it was a VS problem if it had been possible to book the award via UA.

No, that's bad advice from the VS agent and it is not the issue for the OP since OP is talking about comparing partner award availability among partners.

The reason searching for partner awards via EF is a problem is that NH sometimes holds back award inventory for members of its own FFP. That's why the recommended strategy to search for NH awards is to use EF, then cross-check with an easy-to-search website of a partner (like UA) to see if there is actually partner availability.

If you are referring to the "award type" that shows at the top of the page when searching for an award on the NH website, that's not what it means. The "award type" refers to whether it is a partner award for NH members, not whether members of other FFPs can access the award.