First Ever Upgrade... Sydney?

My wife and I only cottoned on to collecting FC miles a few years ago and probably had 30+ VS flights with no recompense. ! Predominantly it's just us two on leisure trips. However we finally got around to registering a couple of years ago will have 180,000 points by the end of the year (mainly due to Singapore Airlines).

Having never upgraded before it would seem the ultimate UC upgrade (and our destination of choice) would be Sydney and back for a few weeks. The stories I read here make it sound 'difficult' to sort out even one leg upgraded so trying to get two people upgraded on a two leg return flight sounds like a nightmare. Ideally we'd also want to book in early 2012 for Jan/Feb 2013 which is probably the busiest time of year for the Sydney route.

So what are the chances? Is it even worth building up hope it is a remote possibility? Having never flown above PE before we really wanted to 'max out'!

Many thanks in advance

Andy

[mitchja]

Welcome to V-Flyer

I managed to book a return reward Upper fare on VS to SYD for later this year.

It did take some doing though. I'm flying on my own and it took about a 20 minute call to VS Premier team to book. Even as the agent was selecting flights for me on their system, they could see reward fares disappearing in front of their eyes on their screen!!

I had to be very flexible with dates and have ended up having to have a 2 night stop-over in HKG going and a 3 night stop-over coming back in order to get all 4 reward flights booked.

You will probably struggle even more so for the dates you want as those dates are high season for Australia. Your best option might be to look at flying around our summer time next year (I'm going end Aug/early Sept) which is the low season for Australia.

Also, don't go off the VS website either as although you can see reward Upper flights for SYD online (although cannot actually book them), the dates it shows reward availability wont match the real-time availability that VS agents have access to via the call center.

[Scrooge]

BTW, it may be worth talking to the FC and seeing if they can do a little search to see if you can get credit for your previous flights, it has been known to happen and the double bonus is, you get the tier points for all those flights dropping in in one go.

[mitchja]

If you are struggling getting Upper reward flights, one compromise might be to think about Premium on the SYD>HKG leg (this flight leg is the only day flight on the whole LHR>HKG>SYD>HKG>LHR journey!!), the rest are all over-night flights.

This would mean, however, you would not get lounge access before your flight at SYD, although there are far worse airports to be hanging around in.

Thanks for the input, it sounds like my suspicions were not unfounded but not insurmountable.

We can be totally flexible on dates and stop overs on at least one direction (pref the way back) are not a problem, although we've done HK lots of times before. Having done the VS flights (in Economy) to Sydney straight through both ways a few years ago it'd be welcome for retaining sanity! August/September is indeed a good option as we've done Australia that time of year the last few years, but would we need to sort out 11 months ahead to guarantee availability? How does it work with getting return flights?

Thanks for your help.

Andy

[mitchja]

All I can suggest you do is call VS and get them to check availability for you. Call Upper Class reservations (0844 579 1111) as they are very good at sorting these sort of things out for you and they will do their very best to help you get the flights booked.

One other thing I will say as well, be sat down when the agent tells you how much tax you have to pay for the reward flight!!!! It's cost me £532 in tax :0 Although £532 for flying to SYD and back in Upper isn't such a bad thing!!

I have been looking also at this option and i must say the most flexible was using Air New Zealand because i had the same problem for the two legs for two passengers.

Andy

Good luck with the booking. Let us know how you get on. I'm thinking of doing a similar trip with my wife next year, so I'm interested on the best way to arrange it.

James thanks for all that advice - very useful.

Cheers

Martin

Because the fights stops in HKG then I think it counts as 2 awards to go LHR-HKG and then HKG-SYD (not sure about that).
What I have found is that the HR-HKG route is always heavily booked but the HKG-SYD is usually pretty open.
Yuo might, therefore, be able to get the HKG-SYD sector quite easily and have to suffer from LHR-HKG.

Having said that it all changes on the day...

[mitchja]

Bizarrely enough, it was actually the HKG>SYD legs that VS where struggling with when I booked. The seat maps also back this up as both my HKG>SYD legs are showing more allocated seats so far.

It's 50K for a Upper Reward LHR>HKG and 40K for the HKG>SYD flight leg or 90K for the all-in-one LHR>SYD reward each way.

It's the same milage if you stop-off or go straight through HKG (although stopping off does increase the tax element by about £50 each way on both reward and revenue fares).

Even in Upper, I'd never do this route all in one go but that's just me

You never know, VS may well start up their 2nd LHR>HKG flight again which may make things slightly easier.

Bizarrely enough, it was actually the HKG>SYD legs that VS where struggling with when I booked. The seat maps also back this up as both my HKG>SYG legs are showing more allocated seats so far.

The UC cabin was rammed between HKG- SYD and SYD- HKG on my last trip - the trip before had seen us in a half empty UC cabin on this leg.
I prefer to break the journey too - even in UC it's a long slog .
DL

Does VS have an UC sale on Sydney at any time of year, as now i have been prematurely forced into retirement we can go at any time of year,just waiting for the best deal or miles to accumulate. y)

Does VS have an UC sale on Sydney at any time of year, as now i have been prematurely forced into retirement we can go at any time of year,just waiting for the best deal or miles to accumulate. y)

It has been known to be part of a sale to but it's not a route that I look at on a regular basis.

Having the ability to be flexible always helps to meet the fare requirements !

Thanks for all the great tips. We have another trip on Air New Zealand through to Auckland and another trip on Singapore Airlines through to Perth already scheduled before we were thinking of using our miles.

We really love both those airlines, probably just as much as VS, so maybe we'd look to use them instead if VS UC just doesn't work out. We can always do UC another time on an easier leg...

The tax element is eye-watering but still a small fraction of the full fare so can live with that.

Cheers,

Andy
NB we are also on VS back to Vegas next month, hopefully this year the bar won't shut before reaching Canada (due to overindulging stag party's) like last June! :0

I thought I'd better mention that we finally booked this UC Sydney trip on our miles back in mid-April, leaving in late January 2013. We had to fly out on a Tuesday and on the outward leg via Shanghai with a couple of nights there. Then FC arranged a connecting flight on Dragon to HK to pick up the Sydney leg. It was no biggy as we've always wanted to see it anyway. The flight back is straight through via Hong Kong - again mid week a couple of weeks later. The FC were super helpful and we cannot wait.

This is when you really know how much is tax!

y)

Andy

Top result Andy, hope you enjoy the holiday. y) y)

This is when you really know how much is tax!

..and those pesky YQ fuel and insurance surcharges of course ):

Great stuff Shanghai is a mega-city and really is a good intro to mainland china. Make sure you try the super-fast Maglev train to/from the airport.

It sounds like a fabulous trip, have a great time

[Nottingham Nick]

We have booked two x UC reward trips to SYD for Jan / Feb 13 - we got almost the exact dates we wanted, as we wanted to fit in with the Aussie Open Tennis and the England Cricket tour of NZ.

I would like to say it was simple, but it wasn't - you have to be a bit brave and, as others have said, treat each leg as a separate journey. The HGK - SYD bits weren't a problem, but the LHR to HGK bits took patience - As soon as you see availability on the day you want - even if it is only one seat - snap it up. Then look again the next day, we found that when one G is taken, it was replaced 24 hours later by another - not saying that this is always the case, but it worked for us.

We finished up with 2 night stopover on the way out and 4 nights on the way back - even managed to book some of the seats online, but most were done over the phone with very helpful agents.

Remember - start early, be flexible, be brave and most of all - be lucky. y)

Nick

We have booked two x UC reward trips to SYD for Jan / Feb 13 - we got almost the exact dates we wanted, as we wanted to fit in with the Aussie Open Tennis and the England Cricket tour of NZ.

Excellent.I'd forgotten about the tennis - looks like we get there just after it finishes.

I would like to say it was simple, but it wasn't - you have to be a bit brave and, as others have said, treat each leg as a separate journey. The HGK - SYD bits weren't a problem, but the LHR to HGK bits took patience - As soon as you see availability on the day you want - even if it is only one seat - snap it up. Then look again the next day, we found that when one G is taken, it was replaced 24 hours later by another - not saying that this is always the case, but it worked for us.

It took us a couple of phone calls but the first was just to see what the situation was likely to be. They were super helpful and as it;s LHR to HGK bits that were the problem for us it was neatly sidestepped by the Shanghai option but we were just happy we had two seats booked in one call to SYD and back.

We finished up with 2 night stopover on the way out and 4 nights on the way back - even managed to book some of the seats online, but most were done over the phone with very helpful agents.

HKG is a great stop-over location, in this case we just wanted to be transported back asap.

Remember - start early, be flexible, be brave and most of all - be lucky. y)

It does work! Very happy!

Andy
Oh and btw "Go sox!"