Partner Airline Miles Redemptions

I'm in New York and I've been trying for the past week to redeem FC miles for a trip to Asia in May. The process either for the flyer, or the (Gold) Customer Service desk isn't very easy. Trying to find where there might be availability and when is rather akin to playing the 'Battleships' game. In fact I'm not sure that SQ actually have marked any squares on their side of the board!

I'd guess it's pretty frustrating for Customer Service Desk, trying variations of different dates that might work. Perhaps it's a bigger problem out of the US but I do get the feeling that Desk spends a lot of time working on what is, after all, not a revenue enhancing activity for Virgin.

Eventually I went away and used the ANA availability tool. If nothing else ten minutes with that will show you just how thin availability is on the partner awards. In fact VS seem to be a lot more generous than the others!

Eventually I tracked down a Malaysian flight and had the Desk work on that. They had to work hard on it as well, as the ticketing process didn't want to work nicely. What really impressed me was how the desk representative kept on top of it, checking it each day and escalating it until finally I got the magic email advice that ticketing had worked.

A few thoughts. One, using the partner program isn't easy, but there are some interesting deals out there. 'C' class return to Asia from the US was 125,000 miles. Two, the ANA tool (and there's plenty of links to that) can help you. Three, the Gold Desk is really very good. Of all of the benefits of making Gold it may be the most underappreciated!

[Nottingham Nick]

I have had some very similar problems.

The whole system is a mess. It isn't the fault of the agents at Virgin, nor the agents at SQ, who do their best to try and help, it is purely down to a very, very poor system of booking seats.

I have also found that the ANA tool isn't always a help, because it would seem that SQ have at least two tiers of availability. ANA show what reward seats are there for their own Krisflyers, but that does not necessarily mean that they are available for partner airlines to book. [?]

VS are aware of the problems, but their attitude is 'Sorry, we know the system is difficult, but that is the how it has to work'.

Perseverance, flexibility and the patience of Job (on the part of both the passenger and the VS agent) are required when trying to book more than a simple LHR - SIN flight. [:?]

You are right though, it does make you appreciate the comparably very wide availability and simple booking processes for VS reward seats. (Unless, of course, you are trying to book 3 X MCO UC seats during school holidays [;)][}:)] )

Nick