V-Flyer

Hi All

Just to let you know if you use reward flight flyer for Virgin flights it is down and has been since Monday!

Weird as it has been and is working for me!

None of my alerts have been checked for over 2 days!!!
Hopefully I haven’t missed anything!

Got this email this morning:
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Hi there,
I'm getting in touch because you currently have at least one Virgin Atlantic alert set up with Reward Flight Finder,
We launched support for Virgin Atlantic back in February, which has generally worked very smoothly. Due to some changes on their side in the last few days, we're currently unable to access their data. That means we can't update our availability or send you alerts when seats become available.
We're working on a solution to this, and will keep you updated by email. If you want to help move things forward, you could try contacting Virgin to tell them how much you value Reward Flight Finder - you can email them here (choose the "Flying Club" option, and then "General enquiry").
We massively value your support for Reward Flight Finder as an Elite member. If you signed up for Elite because you wanted to use our Virgin Atlantic functionality, then please just reply to this email and we'll be happy to give you a refund for any period that our service isn't fully operational.
If you have any questions at all, just reply to this email.
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Looks like we're gonna have to do it the old fashioned way

Update to those interested: alas, Reward Flight Flyer's web site now states that as they've been unable to get access to reward seat availability on Virgin Atlantic working for the past weeks, they've ceased to support Virgin Atlantic (and the user interface on the site has been redesigned to omit availability searches for VS flights).

A pity--this was genuinely useful, and a huge improvement over making repeated one-off queries on the VS web site.

I can't help but wonder if the cessation of data availability was an accident, or intentional on VS's part.

-Brad

Interestingly, I've found it impossible to search for miles redemptions on the VS site on the MAN - LAX route for about two or three weeks. You just couldn't select "miles" as an option, either on the regular site or the app. Now, you can select it, but there's minimal availability.

spacedog wrote:Interestingly, I've found it impossible to search for miles redemptions on the VS site on the MAN - LAX route for about two or three weeks. You just couldn't select "miles" as an option, either on the regular site or the app. Now, you can select it, but there's minimal availability.

I would guess that is because we are nearing the end of the summer season that MAN-LAX runs for. There's probably not that many flights left...!

spacedog wrote:Interestingly, I've found it impossible to search for miles redemptions on the VS site on the MAN - LAX route for about two or three weeks. You just couldn't select "miles" as an option, either on the regular site or the app. Now, you can select it, but there's minimal availability.

I've reported the "greyed out" mile option bug to the website team a number of times, covering multiple routes. Even once letting them remote into my screen to see it. Still not fixed.

Usually if you close your browser and start again you can get it to work for a search or 2 before it starts to fail. Or try a different type of browser.

Slimpy, I was looking for way into next year, but no direct flights within a 5 week window of when we need them :(

Broono93, that's exactly the issue I was having, except I couldn't get the miles option to work on the LAX route at all, no matter what I tried. It was working for me properly today for the first time in a while.

bnkarp wrote:I can't help but wonder if the cessation of data availability was an accident, or intentional on VS's part.

Entirely intentional, according to Headforpoints, despite many in VS supporting the tool.

Expertflyer (think maybe only the paid version) still allows you to search for VS reward flights +/- 3 days from your date and you can still (at the moment) set up email notifications when reward seats become available.

Its very reliable and takes away the issue with greyed out buttons

David

This is very disappointing. Searching the site for any availability across a number of dates is brutally slow, especially on the mobile site.

I was actually tempted to write a service such as reward flight finder myself given how poor the VS site is for searching until I realised the service already existed. Technically I guess I could just scrape the site results but I imagine that's against the t's & c's

Interesting thread. Whats the reward letter for a seat in Premium, and a seat in Upper?

sjcraythorne wrote:Interesting thread. Whats the reward letter for a seat in Premium, and a seat in Upper?

P for PE and G for UC

DL

Thank you Dragon Lady.

Is it just me, or is it harder to come by reward seats these days. Used to be that you could get availability as soon as flight opened up for sale (at least for me anyhow)