Flying Club & Reward Flights

Hi all,

Has anyone else come across this? I decided to book some reward flights today, Gs of course, before the cost in miles goes up. Done this plenty of times now using miles from my account and my other half's account, as I'm authorised to use his account.

Bearing in mind I got through to the Welsh call centre.
I was told that to book flights from 2 different accounts would require 2 separate bookings. Erm, no it doesn't I said. Yes it does said the agent. I say I've booked plenty of times now and no that I can book from 2 FC accounts onto one booking with one reference etc.

Yes but we've got a new system now and you can't. Well I'll call back later I said and hung up quick.

Has anyone come up against this since the changes were announced? There's no way I'm going to accept that if I don't need to as that means bookings have to be managed separately.

I'm feeling ranty...

[buns]

Yep, had exactly the same response.

Thanks to being on the Au Call Line the agent subsequently fixed it "manually". The same has occurred with our upgrade this afternoon, but Mrs Buns' account is taking the hit

buns

Yup read the same on another forum about this happening so I posted 'no you don't I just booked for me and husband & asked them to take my booking from my miles and his from his no problem' then remembered I did mine the week before (thank God) the big continuing upgrade of the system ! - very dangerous - suppose you manage one from your account & by the time you go on-line to do the other one & its gone to someone else

Well after online chat with a VS agent who confirmed it I was less happy. So I thought about transferring miles to one account, but would need to transfer 75000. They wanted to charge me £577.50 for that so erm no, that's not happening.

I was told they could link the bookings afterwards so that VS know it's one party traveling together, but flights have to be managed separately under different refs and online checkin separate. So I had to bite the bullet and do it.

A lovely agent in Upper Class Team, very helpful, got us booked, linked the bookings, assigned us our seats on the A side of the Dreamliners and within only a few minutes our 2 e-tickets arrived in my inbox.

I'm happy to be booked, but what a farce, and another step back in service and functionality, and therefore, convenience. Ho hum...

I'm sorry to hear this.

Our last flight has (again) sealed my defection.

I've two *nearly three 2-4-1's in the bag and enough Avios for the redemptions. Even in CW I think I will have a better time of it. Sad though it is.....

So Bretty, whats your advice if someone needs to book rewards flights for more than one person? Can you at least do it one call but two separate transactions? Or are they insisting that the other account holder call to book their ticket? And this means no more pooling of miles??? Im confused, and more importantly very worried as me and the other half currently have uneven balances and I need to know if I need to ensure the low account is bought up to an even level.

Another failure that VS can add to the list!

I'm glad I was able to book last month's birthday trip to New York before the system change as I combined miles from my wife's account with mine. She had enough for one flight sector and the other sectors came from my account. It seems like that would be impossible now.

Did anyone at VS do an audit of the capabilities of their old IT system that would need to be put into the new system? Or did they just not care about making such changes without communicating them to FC members?

So Bretty, whats your advice if someone needs to book rewards flights for more than one person? Can you at least do it one call but two separate transactions? Or are they insisting that the other account holder call to book their ticket? And this means no more pooling of miles??? Im confused, and more importantly very worried as me and the other half currently have uneven balances and I need to know if I need to ensure the low account is bought up to an even level.

Hi Rabbit, yes I'm afraid you'll need to make sure each account has the miles required. Where before one might have used 150,000 from one account and 50,000 from the other for flights of 100,000 each, you now obviously can't do that combining of miles.

You can do it all at once in one phone call presuming you are authorised on your partner's account. It requires 2 separate card transactions though, but VS recently stopped surcharges so no big deal.

Thanks for confirming bretty. This is going to cause all manner of issues with my admin for our accounts, I'm in charge of both oh well at least I'm the organised one.

Remember if anyone in your household is a Flying Club Gold member you can now pool miles into a new Household Account.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=294721

Just been looking at MPM flights - it looks like you only get those prices once you do a dummy booking, and then getting a partial miles redemption at the end of putting in names of passengers? Am I missing something here? I know MPM isnt usually good use of miles, but the way things are going with VS, I can't see us getting much use of them for much longer. Sadly.....

I thought MPM had been genuinely enhanced in that you can now spend as many miles as you want rather than a small, set amount and you can use them to pay the taxes & fees.

But yes spending 35,000 miles to get £210 off is fairly poor value when for the same miles you could save hundreds on a return PE reward.

I thought MPM had been genuinely enhanced in that you can now spend as many miles as you want rather than a small, set amount and you can use them to pay the taxes & fees.

But yes spending 35,000 miles to get £210 off is fairly poor value when for the same miles you could save hundreds on a return PE reward.

Remember you now officially earn miles and tier points with a MPM fare as well now.

David

Just having a poke about (checking the MPM fare rules ) and found out about the "new" companion seat rules.

In upper anything bar a Z fare gives you a roundtrip companion seat for 47,400 miles to east coast USA (in off peak) or

anything bar a K in premium gives you a roundtrip companion seat for 17,400 miles to east coast USA (in off peak)

That's seems like a genuine enhancement or am I reading it wrong ??

David

You may be right there. For UC it used to be J-class only that qualified, but now if it's anything but Z that is a definite improvement and may actually open up companion seats to be used for UC!

You can do it all at once in one phone call presuming you are authorised on your partner's account. It requires 2 separate card transactions though, but VS recently stopped surcharges so no big deal.

I can't remember if I am authorised on my other half's account, Its always me who did the bookings prior to the big website debacle upgrade, is there someone I have to call in order to do this or do I have to send a real letter in with his signature etc. please?

You can do it over the phone. The OH will have to talk to them - verify identity etc - but nothing needed in writing

Oh thanks Tonty, I'd better call & check while I think of it.