OzJohnno

In July this year my wife and I are travelling to London from Sydney. Usually I would book my Domestic flights from Mackay on Velocity points flying Business Class but when I attempted to, I found that I could not get Business Reward seats. There were Business Class seats available but the point cost was astronomical. Far more than I would have spent in the past. This leads me to my question. Did I miss the announcement that Virgin was no longer issuing Business Reward seats?

As I have to get to Sydney to start our holiday it looks like I'll have to pay for my seats and given that QANTAS business class fare is almost the same as Virgins and as they have a Business Class lounge in Mackay (Virgin closed theirs) I can see my 20+ years as a Virgin flyer coming to an end.

JClasstraveller

No they haven’t.

The J reward seats are just not available at the time you want.

Demand for travel is high. Often J seats have been priced very reasonably if purchased a fair way in advance so there may be no need to offer the remaining seats at standard redemption rates.

Firemansam

6 weeks ago we picked up J seats MEL-ADL for August that are half the price of QF.
Now most of that days cheap business seats are already gone for all flights.

OzJohnno

Thanks for that. I am still surprised that J reward seats are gone 6 and 9 months out. Shows I'm a little out of touch. I'm going to ring Virgin on Monday to get the answer from the horses mouth. Paying just short of 5K for the two of us to fly MKY-SYD return in J is not cheap IMO

JClasstraveller

It’s a 2.5 hr flight - just fly Y if you’re not willing to pay those prices (which seems unusually high).

Not sure what you’ll achieve calling in.

If you’re trying to fly during school holidays then no surprise they’re gone.

OzJohnno

Thought I would update my original post.

Virgin have stopped issuing J Rewards seats because they now only fly leased Alliance F100's from Mackay. They were kind enough to contact me to advise me of the changes because I had booked J seats with them (and yes it did cost just short of 5K - same with Qantas)

I cancelled my VA flights and re-booked on Qantas who still have J seats from Mackay and a lounge.

Our 50th anniversary holiday will still go ahead and we're looking forward to our first suite experience out of Sydney.

Paros_fan

How is everyone finding Business reward seats? I'm struggling to find anything on any date from Sydney to Perth or Cairns or Darwin or basically anywhere that isn't just Brisbane or Melbourne!



And the online tool makes it impossible to without searching and clicking every date.

Surely there is an easier way to find business reward seats?

John Darcy

This week (flying today, actually) I booked Economy and then upgraded to Business for 10,000 points. (SYD-MEL). I'm not saying that transaction would be available for all sectors or all days or all phases of the Moon, but it happened and I was happy with the price.

ozstamps

Report are they are often only ONE biz seat showing on many routes. Book that and another shows. As we travel as a couple this is darn annoying.