V-Flyer

I have yet to fly VS UC. We did have seats in UC on the NRT flight but these were switched to ANA after the withdrawal of the Tokyo service.

But no worries, we have collected another 120,000 points to try again- yay!

But... (there is always a but!) whenever I search on the website reward flight availability calendar for UC seats and click on dates with the UC purple availability mark showing, the next secreen tells me there is in fact NO UC availability! This is frustrating.

I know when booking reward seats it is best to call the FC and speak to a staff member, but currently I am just perusing the possibilities.

Maybe I am doing something wrong, but I guess it is the usual VS website inefficieny?

Also, whilst I am on and moaning can I ask:

When (or if) flights become available on the dates I want them, would booking a OW ticket out and then waiting and booking a OW ticket back approx 2 weeks later be a sensible course of action, rather than waiting and then finding the outbound flights have gone? I assume you can do this?

And if I choose to cancel a reward flight booking at a later time, what are the penalties with rewards seat bookings (M to G upgrades)?Is there a monetary and points penalty?

Sorry if these questions have been asked before, but i am much more familiar with booking flights with Avios.

I can only say what I have done with my MCO flights.
I waited until the inbound was released.
I wanted the Saturday but no UC reward seats so waited another day and there were reward seats for the Sunday so I was straight on the phone and bought my Economy upgraded to UC flights both ways.
These are not refundable, so if I cancel altogether I lose my money. I can do a date change, as I did last year to a Sunday to get the UC, but this is subject to a charge which I think was £100.
Dick D

Calm down dear, it's only a website!

If you do straight redemptions then your miles are refundable if you cancel more than 24 hours before departure, plus £30 admin fee on refund of taxes, and if less than 24 hours you lose your miles but get your taxes back, subject to £30 admin fee. Date changes, route changes and change of cabin class can be made for a £30 admin fee.

Same rules apply for reward upgrades on a revenue ticket (M-G for example), and thereafter whether the base fare is refundable / changeable is dependent on the rules for the particular fare bucket.

Thanks for the replies chaps. The website seems to be playing ball again now.

We think we may try for Economy to UC upgrade tickets to Miami next April.

I may have very well have imagined it but did someone mention in a post a few months ago that the M bucket fare was being discontnued? If this is so, has this happened yet and what will be the cheapest upgradable economy fare?

Not quite, it seems to have disappeared from the search parameters in the website so searches are not returning M fares, but they do show up on ITA matrix.

You haven't been able to select specific fare buckets on the VS website for over a year now (well actually you can, but it just defaults to the cheapest available fare).

AFAIK nothing's changed regarding M fares though.

Thanks again.

I did look on ITA Matrix but the options there again seem to be Economy (Lowest) and PE/ Business/First rather than specific fare buckets.

IT is clearly not my strongpoint. Give me paper and a pen anyday

Edit: I have worked out how to search for M fares with Travel Codex:

http://travelcodex.com/2012/01/advanced ... ge-in-ita/

Apparently "/ f bc=M" was what I needed to enter in the advanced routing cod box. Who'd of thought?

Maximus wrote:Thanks again.

I did look on ITA Matrix but the options there again seem to be Economy (Lowest) and PE/ Business/First rather than specific fare buckets.

IT is clearly not my strongpoint. Give me paper and a pen anyday

Edit: I have worked out how to search for M fares with Travel Codex:

http://travelcodex.com/2012/01/advanced ... ge-in-ita/

Apparently "/ f bc=M" was what I needed to enter in the advanced routing cod box. Who'd of thought?

Sorry, I thought you knew. But now you do