Flying Club improvements coming soon

It seems that it is not based on the actual cash price ticket but on the cash fare bucket code.

I was looking at dates and could purchase 8 upper class saver seats on VS3 in May, priced at 29,000 points per seat.
4 seats already “reserved in UC” . Cash fare bucket was Z.

Whilst the VS45 was coming in at 2.45 million points for 7 upper seats. But 20 “reserved seats” on that flight already and cash bucket is I.

I’ve seen flights where now premium seats are more expensive than Upper class. It’s not unheard of for cash prices to be cheaper in higher cabins, where the cheaper fare buckets in the lower cabin have been exhausted, so it’s not really that surprising to see outliers of that nature in the redemption pricing

I decided to cancel my delta booking and get ecredits.

Just booked for end of May

2 adults , LHR-JFK in UC, JFK-LHR in Premium 79,000 points and £1,100 taxes.

Great deal in my opinion

I think this post is mostly waffle and not helpful, but I started writing it, so might as well post.

Here’s a little price-to-point comparison. To simplify things, it’s just LHR-JFK return for one week for one pax.

Jan 1st - 8th - £3289 (zz)
129,000 + £845
Saving: £2444
Value per point: 1.89p

Jan 4th - 11th - £3490 (zz)
134,000 + £845
Saving: £2645
Value per point: 1.97p

Jan 7th - 14th - £1977 (zz)
58,000 + £670
Saving:£1307
Value per point: 2.25p

Jan 10th - 17th - £2177 (zz)
66,000 + £758
Saving: £1419
Value per point: 2.15p

Looking at LHR-MCO return for one week for one pax. Thankfully this throws in an I fare to offer a poi.

Jan 15th - 22nd - £3058 (zz)
97,500 + £1020
Saving: £2038
Value per point: 2.09p

Jan 25th - 1st - £3208 (zz)
132,000 + £1020
Saving: £2188
Value per point: 1.66p

Jan 8th - Jan 15th - £3393 (iz)
237,500 + £1020
Saving: £2373
Value per point: 1p

The introduction of the i fare increases the required points to crazy levels. The cash fare is less than one of the NYC fares above, but the points required are almost doubled.

Finally, just looked up LHR/LAX and there are instances on this route where the points required are lower, even with a higher cash fare. All Z fares again.

Mar 9 - 16th - £2977 (zz)
98,000 + £758
Saving: £2219
Value per point: 2.27p

Mar 5 - 12th - £2777 (zz)
108,500 + £845
Saving: £1932
Value per point: 1.78p

Any takeaway from this?

Around 2p a mile seems good value.

Cash Z fare availability is a must. Remember, on ITA, you can input “VS” as a routing code and “F BC=Z” as an extension code to see an easy monthly view. You’d add both without the quotation marks. But as shown with LA, the cheapest fare doesn’t necessarily mean the least amount of points. A bit puzzled with that one.

[mitchja]

Dont dismiss I fares completely though.......I fares work out good value to maintain your AU status. For example I'm looking at flying to HNL next year. A return I fare on that route (via somewhere like LAX, JFK or SEA) is only ~£300 more than a Z fare.

On many routes I fares are only a few hundred pounds more than a Z fare.

A return I fare will earn me 400 TP's on the return VS flight legs compared to just 200 TP's if it was a return Z fare so that works out way cheaper in the long run and better value compared to buying 2 x Z return fares.

Do be careful booking I fares via AF or KL though as its only VS 932 or DL 006 ticketed I fares that earn the double tier points. AF and KL booked I fares only earn 100 tier points per leg.

Whilst many may disagree with me, I personally value status over points value.

I've got flights booked to MCO next March that cost 118,700 points + £1940 taxes for two, using a CC voucher to reduce the points (I'm red).

I've just looked at what it would be in this new world and it's showing a points total of 154,000 + £1780 taxes. Going by the new CC voucher rules, I could use that to reduce the points by 75,000 making it 79,000 + £1780 taxes.

Have I read this right? Is it therefore worth me cancelling and rebooking (I assume the voucher will be credited back to my account straight away to allow that)? Also, is the cancellation fee that applies what it was at the time of booking (£30 each if I remember correctly)?

[mitchja]

Be aware, the reward flight change fee has now increased to £70. Not sure if VS are still waiving this change fee for Flying Club Gold members?

I've got flights booked to MCO next March that cost 118,700 points + £1940 taxes for two, using a CC voucher to reduce the points (I'm red).

I've just looked at what it would be in this new world and it's showing a points total of 154,000 + £1780 taxes. Going by the new CC voucher rules, I could use that to reduce the points by 75,000 making it 79,000 + £1780 taxes.

Have I read this right? Is it therefore worth me cancelling and rebooking (I assume the voucher will be credited back to my account straight away to allow that)? Also, is the cancellation fee that applies what it was at the time of booking (£30 each if I remember correctly)?

Brave the phone lines and be our guinea pig.

I’d guess the old cancellation fee would be honoured and everything would credit back immediately. Please just make sure you’re talking to a competent member of the team though before the start cancelling your bookings.

The cleaner way to do this, and if you have another voucher and enough points, is to secure that first, then call and cancel your original booking.

It must be the old change/cancellation fee of £30 as there's now separate T&Cs for bookings made before and from 30th October. £70 only applies to the bookings from yesterday onwards.

https://help.virginatlantic.com/il/en/p ... -club.html
https://help.virginatlantic.com/il/en/p ... -2024.html

Bookings made before 30 October will be charged old price of £30 per person per change. If you then change again , it will be new price of £70

I have a sneaky feeling that the EDI-MCO route will have 0 saver seats and things like this will be the norm.

Edinburgh MCO
Edi-MCO.png (64.32 KiB) Viewed 10192 times

This flight just been released so may need to wait a few days, cheap saver rates aren’t going to appear the day the new flight is released…

But, I think it’s like this as there is way more demand for Orlando next year with Epic, even cash fare are inflated.

But it would be worth while for that price to do money and points and then you earn points back on cash flight and then can boost also

I just spend an hour and 40 on hold, trying to upgrade a single leg from premium to upper in January (already flying out in upper) using my voucher. Got quoted 490,000 points minus the 75000 for the voucher.

There are definitely saver seats on the EDI-MCO route. If I look now for example the MCO-EDI flight on Saturday 6th September has saver seats in all classes with UC being only 29k (which seems to be the lowest I've spotted)

There are definitely saver seats on the EDI-MCO route. If I look now for example the MCO-EDI flight on Saturday 6th September has saver seats in all classes with UC being only 29k (which seems to be the lowest I've spotted)

A one way on the 6th on that route is giving me 150,000 in economy, 66,000 in premium and 255,000 in upper

If you add a return on the 17th it goes up to 300,000 in economy, 316,000 in premium and 605,000 in upper.

These are incredible prices and with the cash price at £4312 for 1 upper seat, it will stop me using my local airport given that the same dates ex LHR are £2791.

David

Flexible with dates?

Upper class - 58,500 points EDI-MCO per person one way
28th July
11th August
22nd August

Economy - EDI-MCO

30 August - 22,500 points one way
6 August - 29,000 points one way
Sat 2nd & 9th & 16th - 31,00/32,000 points one way

Flexible with dates?

Upper class - 58,500 points EDI-MCO per person one way
28th July
11th August
22nd August

Thanks Oliver but unfortunately these aren’t direct. They are via CDG with an 8hour 15min layover before the onward flight to MCO.

I think the days of spending an hour or so looking for that “perfect” flight are gone and it’s gonna take hours and hours of trying many many different combinations to get the result your looking for. Wether even the diehards will put up with that, time will tell.

David

This is so weird and random (and I know a little bit about these sorts of pricing algorithms).

Looked ahead to late next Summer MAN-MCO - we are probably not going next year but more on spec.

For one set of dates the points are really low for all cabins, but all others around them have very high UC points and some very high EC (there were some with lower PE than EC).

What's odd is that these are all the same part of the season (late August - early Sept), and when you search on the old website - where you can still see seats available before you book - all flights that I looked at had the same number of UC seats still available.

Obviously there is an explanation (I can only think day of the week?) - but I would have thought that the dynamic aspect would have been cabin-specific and it doesn't look like it is?

[mitchja]

This is so weird and random (and I know a little bit about these sorts of pricing algorithms)...............


.........Obviously there is an explanation (I can only think day of the week?) - but I would have thought that the dynamic aspect would have been cabin-specific and it doesn't look like it is?

Someone on another forum was suggesting that the day of week does seem to play a part in this dynamic pricing as well. I suspect there is probably some truth to that as VS rev man will know exactly which days are busiest for travel to each destination. Corporate travel patterns to destinations like JFK & LAX etc will probably be different to leisure travel patterns to other destinations.

Just tried to convert a full fare cash J ticket to be points at the airport. Didn’t go super well.

Airport staff told me to call in because they didn’t know how to proceed. The call center Gold person gave up and pawned me off on the Upper folks. They then held that the point cost of the seat was 350K, 250K if I wanted to downgrade to W, which was the only available class of unsold seat. They also weren’t sure they could even process a refund of a J ticket. Insanity. They then suggested airport staff call Global Ticketing.

Airport staff managed to refund my J, rebook as W for cash, then offer an airport-reduced upgrade rate to G. Points was 114K + YQ of $297. Cash upgrade was $1034.

Took around an hour at the checkin desk to sort out.

Seems VS has some work to do to make this new rewards system functional and even remotely reasonable for those of us that live in “vacation destinations.”

I’m not entirely sure the old system would have coped with your request much better.

What was the rationale? I’ve never actually booked a full J, but in your situation, I would have assumed I’d have been able to cancel the J, and then used points or cash at the days rate. The combination of cancelling and booking through the same transaction seems arbitrary. Surely it’s completely separate?

I decided to cancel my delta booking and get ecredits.

Just booked for end of May

2 adults , LHR-JFK in UC, JFK-LHR in Premium 79,000 points and £1,100 taxes.

Great deal in my opinion

I had booked a late flight to JFK arriving after 9pm as that was the saver seat available. I checked last night at around 11pm and an earlier flight at midday had dropped from 140,000 to 29,000.
So I changed it , had to pay 140£ change fee.
I can understand a little why they’ve increased this fee, as these fluctuations are going to happen and people will swap to a better flight.

What I do not understand is , that it’s supposed to be based on demand and availability.
At the time, the original flight I booked had 10 reserved seats in Upper Class. My new flight, only 2 (which is me and partners).
I think they need to work on their algorithms

Something key we've all glossed over here (myself included) is the changes to the earning side of things.

Points earned formula is now: miles flown * booking class % * 30% for silver/60% for gold.

The website isn't 100% clear on this but at the minimum you're earning 280% miles flown for Premium (K/H), 400% (W/S) then Upper 480% (Z/I) and 800% (J/C/D). I'm not sure if the table is taking the extra 30/60% for As/Au into account.

So that means for a Z fare return to LAX you'd earn somewhere in the region of 87,000 points return if my maths is right.

I still think this is a terrible change, but at least the flown miles earning is adjusted too.

One of the things I'm curious about is points boosters. Especially what happens to points boosters bought before these changes took effect. I would assume you still earn the old rates which would be pretty sucky. I'm going to investigate whether I can undo mine if thats the case.

Points earned formula is now: miles flown * booking class % * 30% for silver/60% for gold.

The website isn't 100% clear on this but at the minimum you're earning 280% miles flown for Premium (K/H), 400% (W/S) then Upper 480% (Z/I) and 800% (J/C/D). I'm not sure if the table is taking the extra 30/60% for As/Au into account.

Thanks for that, I had been looking for this and I don't think they posted that information on the website until recently; after the change it just vaguely mentioned there would be "up to 75%" more points in Premium and "up to 50%" more in Upper.

I think those figures you quoted are including 60% Au bonus. On this page (on desktop browser at least), it shows the amounts for each tier.

So, it looks like before any Silver/Gold bonus, basic Premium (H/K) has increased from 100% of base miles to 175% and basic Upper (I/Z) has increased from 200% to 300%.

At least this also sorts out the slightly weird anomaly of Economy Delight earning more miles than Premium as it did previously.

[mitchja]

First impressions, not impressed at all.

Tried a booking yesterday EDI to MCO. Came in at 350K miles plus £1800 tax, on the old G class fare would have been 250k miles.
Did various searches today EDI/LHR to MCO all of them coming in with 900k mile plus taxes. Surely not correct.

This change has been such a mega s***show, is there any possibility they might revert back to the old system, until they can have this ready for prime-time, which it clearly is not!