V-Flyer

A quick work trip to NY just before Christmas is on the cards for me, so as usual I have been looking at availability of UC miles seats, so that I can upgrade my economy ( ! ) ticket.

Here is VS for December:


Out of curiosity I looked at BA:


Quite a difference! And when I looked at the BA options in detail, the overwhelming majority of them are via ORY on OpenSkies!

What does this prove? Absolutely nothing. (Maybe BA is selling lots of revenue seats and VS isn't... Maybe BA has blacked out availability around Christmas... Maybe I should conduct a more scientific study... )

But the good availability of Gs is one of several reasons I am still loyal to VS. y) It is all very well having snazzy 241s and cheap WTP upgrades into CW, but if you can't get the seats....

Or else VS has loads of seats to sell and are trying the rewards route to sell them?

NY is always good for getting reward seats, it's the other routes you struggle on.

Concorde RIP wrote:Or else VS has loads of seats to sell and are trying the rewards route to sell them?

Well, in my defence, I did suggest that myself!

Concorde RIP wrote:NY is always good for getting reward seats, it's the other routes you struggle on.

Funny, I've found NYC more difficult of late, especially returning to the UK. That's why I was pleasantly surprised to see the availability for Dec.

I know my 'experiment' is meaningless; I was just trying to counter some of the recent praise of the BA EC -- some of which has come from me!

at240 wrote:Funny, I've found NYC more difficult of late, especially returning to the UK. That's why I was pleasantly surprised to see the availability for Dec.

I know my 'experiment' is meaningless; I was just trying to counter some of the recent praise of the BA EC -- some of which has come from me!

Agreed on the difficulty of snagging G upgrades on the NYC route of late... usually have to do it at the airport.. the nerve of VS

It isn't meaningless, a good spot actually and yes it is something odd, perhaps a lot of seats free due to the ill effects of Sandy still lingering.... though the main counter to the BA reward upgrades is simply I can hop two cabins with VS and with BA I can't :w

Keep the experiments coming, you're nearly at 1000 posts 8D

joeyc wrote:Keep the experiments coming, you're nearly at 1000 posts 8D

:0 How did that happen?

Here is the picture for the return -- VS still a lot better but less of a differential:

I wasn't dissing the experiment, far from it...

I guess there are so many factors that could affect availability - seasonality (xmas BY shopping anyone?), school hols etc etc.

Only time will tell, I guess - and customer frustration with miles/Avios in the bank and no way to spend them will tell the "truth"...

I tried NYC earlier this year for Christmas and there want this availability. Perhaps they haven't had the sales and released more G,s anyway because of the lack of availability I bagged two G's to Cancun in March.

As for BA reading on this forum they seem to be getting more and more praise and they might just be having better revenue sales.

OK well out of curiosity I have done some more research

So, here are the various US destinations that VS flies to. After the airport I've given the number of days in December that VS has at least one UC reward seat available, then the number of days in December that BA has at least one CW seat available.

Airport VS / BA

SFO 4 / 1
LAX 11 / 0
IAD 21 / 1
MIA 7 / 1
BOS 24 / 3
MCO 4 / 0
ORD 0 / 1

Big differences in some cases...

Is it because VS is struggling to sell revenue seats? Who knows. But what I do know is that, given a choice, I'd rather be in a FF programme that has better J availability. 8D

Might VS be struggling to sell seats.
Anyone else notice lots of revenue generating offers lately?

Things like bonus miles when you buy/gift them etc and that bizarre offer that I still don't quite understand. (Miles Ladder or something)

On the other hand, the availability calender above could mean 2 x G per flight rather than each flight being wide open.

Bit difficult for VS to have reward seats to ORD in December...

There have been many complaints on FT about the lack of BA reward seats recently. It's not always this bad from when I have looked in the past. But seems that availability drops at the T-2 months mark? Just my observation, not seen anyone else say that.