V-Flyer

I was wondering if anybody has had any luck redeeming FC miles for the NRT-LHR ANA flight.

It arrives at almost the same time as the VS flight but I've heard that the seat and service are an improvement on VS. Not to mention the fact that ANA flyers have a choice of different lounges at NRT (including the Clubhouse, which gets incredibly busy). I'm keen to try ANA out for myself.

My worry is that normal ANA redemptions are RT only and that the FC website is showing the cost as 65,000 miles vs 50,000 for UC. With this particular flight being a VS codeshare, I'm not sure what impact this has.

I'm hoping you guys can arm me with info before I call up FC! y)

(It goes without saying that the outbound leg will be with VS, I wouldn't dream of missing out on the DTCI and Clubhouse )

No personal experience of redeeming on ANA, but all redemptions on partner airlines seem to sit somewhere between very difficult and completely impossible. n(

Best of luck in your endeavours, please let us know how you go on.

Nick

OK. It took some time but I've actually had some good luck and off-loaded a boat load of miles on a few reward bookings with ANA for our honeymoon. I was pretty flexible with the dates and booked almost 11 months in advance (although the availability changes so often I'm not sure it was necessary).

It started off to a rocky start because Virgin Flying Club basically can tell you absolutely nothing regarding availability until you request a specific date pair, they submit the request to ANA and you wait to see what happens. It got pretty frustrating. However, I did some research and figured out how to see the ANA availability which helped tremendously.

You need to sign up and become a member of ANA Mileage Club. It is free, easy and activates almost instantaneously - even before you take an ANA flight. Go to the ANA website and click through to Award Reservations, enter your membership number and password. Once you are logged in, click on ANA International Flight Awards. You can then search any ANA route for availability. If they have availability, I'd call flying club ASAP and book it because the availability changes really quickly. I snagged two different bookings for both of us in business, I check pretty often to see if any seats in first open up but I've literally never seen one reward in first become available.

It sounds a little complicated, but it seriously makes things sooo much easier knowing the availability before calling flying club. Oh, and yeah, it literally saved me over $20,000 of hard-earned cash.

If you have any questions - let me know. I spent way too much time figuring out the ANA reward redemptions.

Good luck & let us know how things work out!

We did an UC upgrade from a very low PE price in 2011, for a four day holiday in Tokyo. I still have to post the TR.

The VA staff on both outbound and return flights were outstanding; choose the Bento boxes, amazing food.

ANA; not so good; my brother-in-law had some really bad experiences with them in relation to delays and poor service.

DS and Starfish

Thanks for your help guys.

I opened an ANA account and checked availability, this was ok. The main concern was with a one way award.

Basically ANA charges the same for one way as for return. 95,000 in business between LHR-NRT. (According to the person at the Flying Club, this is standard for all partner redemptions)

I'd rather pay the 5,000 extra miles and get the clubhouse and DTCI at LHR.

There are some really interesting things you can do with ANA awards. Various FF blogs cover this in depth. I had considered booking a 'technical RT' of NRT-LHR 3 month stopover and then a one way flight LHR-CDG. This, bizzarely is permissable.

However as this wouldn't be done on ANA metal, this doesn't work as a partner booking.

Long story short, I now have my return flight booked on VS (on Easter Monday, for two of us, no less y) ) and am waiting for G availability on the outbound.

On this trip I'll also be flying from NRT to MEL via SYD on Qantas and back on JAL (using AA miles, only £37 in taxes each way) So I'll still get to have fun comparing various different C class products and lounges. |:)