sickmint79

i see sites likes seats.aero and roame.travel showing amex to virgin australia, however i don't understand how this works.

my amex account lets me transfer to virgin atlantic. however it does not seem like one can transfer from there to virgin australia.

trying to get my parents in chicago out to sydney where my sis is having a baby. i find 95% air india and an occasional qatar, although of the few qatar flights available 80% seem only to be from virgin australia and 20% from flying blue.

is amex transfer to virgin australia only for something like australian cardholders? or am i completely missing something here?

Mwenenzi

Amex cards in different countries can have different partners.
Amex AU has Virgin Australia credit card. https://www.americanexpress.com/au/c...frequent_flyer
Amex AU MR partners (includes VA when looking on AU site) https://global.americanexpress.com/rewards/transfer

Virgin Australia used to fly to USA, but since CV19 & administration does not. Unsure why you are looking at VA Velocity
Anyway for award flights USA AU are other options.
What ffp's are you a member of? Of those ffp's what airline partners do they have? Oneworld alliance~Star Allaince-Skyteam and non alliance partners.
When do they want to travel? Class of travel? . Book as one ways. On different airlines ~ different ffp's if needed.
Getting 2 off business class seats can be hard to very hard.

Airlines that fly USA/Canada to/from Australia. Schedules can change. Not all routes daily.

• Air Canada AC YVR – SYD BNE [Star Alliance]
  
• Air New Zealand NZ LAX ORD SFO IAH JFK YVR – AKL – Australia various[Star Alliance]
  
• Air Tahiti Nui TN LAX SEA via PPT Tahiti & AKL. Last segment on QF codeshares. (AA AS partner) [SEA new route March 2023]
  
• American Airlines AA LAX-SYD. DFW-BNE from 27 Oct 2024 - Mar 2025(new route) [OneWorld Alliance]
  
• Delta DL LAX – SYD. LAX BNE three times per week Dec. 4, 2024 to March 28, 2025. [Skyteam Alliance]
• Fiji Airways FJ LAX SFO HNL YVR– NAN - BNE SYD CBR MEL ADL. (OneWorld Alliance connect.)
  
• Hawaiian HA HNL – SYD. Pre CV19 also used to fly to BNE ( AA VA partner)
  
• Jetstar JQ HNL – SYD. Pre CV19 also used to fly to/from BNE & MEL
  
• Qantas QF LAX SFO DFW HNL YVR* - SYD; LAX - BNE; LAX DFW - MEL. {* seasonal}. SYD-AKL-JFK from 14 June 2023. [OneWorld Alliance]
  
• United UA SFO LAX - MEL, IAH* LAX SFO - SYD, SFO LAX – BNE*. {* seasonable}.[Star Alliance]. (VA partner)
  
• and others via Asia, South America & Middle East

sickmint79

i have amex, alaska, aa, united, singapore, chase points. not sure i have enough for the 2 of them on r/t to oz though. the reason i was looking at velocity was due to the occasional qatar flights that popped up but only seemed to be bookable through virgin australia. these were in roame.travel results. i'm also seeing some near term AA options and am wondering if delaying until a month or two out might result in more availability and trying to wait and book something more opportunistically for them. they are both retired, although for my dad that has just meant working less.

Mwenenzi

Going with QR, means going the long way via DOH (Middle East). QR (OW Alliance) is a ff partner of VA, AS & AA. But award offerings can be be different.
VA is also a UA freq flyer partner, but direct with UA ffp would be better,
Also look at to BNE or MEL. Many people think Australia = Sydney, so do not look at other airports.
If short of ff miles would be looking at one ways on different airlines~different ffp's.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=c%3Ablu...=bm&PW=3&DU=mi

sydunipete

I expect that VA is only an Amex partner for Australia card holders. Unfortunately Australia was locked down hard during the pandemic and demand is still very high (particularly in premium cabins) for the seats available so award flights (to/from Australia) are as scarce as rocking horse poop.

Yes - try cities other than Sydney and maybe check SQ - I've had a bit of luck with them. But this may be a case of a cash ticket being the most likely outcome.