Help with VA airmiles

Hi there

Im planning a trip from Melbourne to London late June/early July 2013 for 3 weeks.

I have 171,000 VA airmiles and my wife 96,000, all expiring soon so I want to use them up.

I cannot find any SYD-LHR reward seat availability for love nor money! Do they get released nearer the travel date? I want to book it all and lock in dates early, I don't want to leave it to the last minute.

I was also thinking about upgrades or companion flight possibilities. 18th June to 9th July MEL-LHR return in VA Premium Economy is just shy of A$4,000 - would this be applicable for a companion flight or would it need to be a different fare?

Would it be better to perhaps buy 2x full price Economy tickets and use miles to upgrade to Premium (or Upper)?

What am I likely to find the best availability with?

What would you do in this case?


Thanks in advance for any suggestions - going to and fro with the website is irritating me. Booking Reward flights ex-UK to the USA gives a nice table of availability so I can immediately see my options. No such luck for Australia!

Thanks

Welome to v- flyer . Miles upgradeable fares are in specific classes ( S and W in PE). As a suggestion it may be better to ring FC and check what reward availability there is in PE/UC for the actual dates you require and work back from there. We're a friendly bunch here and I'm sure we'll try to help as best we can .
DL

Hello and welcome to V-Flyer,

I cannot find any SYD-LHR reward seat availability for love nor money! Do they get released nearer the travel date?

Ha, nope afraid not, reward seat availability is a bit of a hard one with this route. You are looking at 4 segments after all, best bet would be to nab them in sections when they become available and then link all the bookings - which class of travel are you looking at flying?

I was also thinking about upgrades or companion flight possibilities. 18th June to 9th July MEL-LHR return in VA Premium Economy is just shy of A$4,000 - would this be applicable for a companion flight or would it need to be a different fare?

Sorry I am not that familiar with VA fare buckets - if it is anything like VS though, you will need to be looking at the top fares to use companions or to snag upgrades to the premium cabins. VS upgrade and companion fares are L,R,B,Y (Eco) S,W (PE) - you will need reward availability in the cabin you are upgrading into (or your companion is using) though. Again with VS these are T for economy, P for premium economy and G for Upper Class.

Better availability is a tricky one - across the routes I fly, I usually book into economy high fare and then upgrade with miles into the other cabins and yes it sometimes works out cheaper. I must emphasise the sometimes though as I have been caught out in PE when a sale came along and it would have been cheaper to buy sale fare PE tickets :# - you win some you lose some. Basically decide how much you want to spend on the tickets and move from there.

If I were you I would consult the oracle that is V-Flyer y) for advice.... tricky situation - salient point though, how easy is it to spend VA miles on VS?? If very hard, and you lose out on mileage in transfer it may be best to route through from MEL to LAX for example and then pick up the VS LAX - LHR ?|

You should be able to book all this with VA as they code share with VS - or if you want to go through Abu Dhabi there is another codeshare agreement in place with Etihad to get you to LHR - where do you fancy your stopover basically

Sorry for the long reply 8D

Hi there



I have 171,000 VA airmiles and my wife 96,000, all expiring soon so I want to use them up.



Thanks

Don't forget any transaction "resets the clock". Buy something through "shops away" on the Flying Club pages and earn some miles.

Have you tried checking out availability with a code share airline instead ?

I would also say buy something through there "shops away" which should extend your miles to 2015 (I think)

Welome to v- flyer . Miles upgradeable fares are in specific classes ( S and W in PE). As a suggestion it may be better to ring FC and check what reward availability there is in PE/UC for the actual dates you require and work back from there. We're a friendly bunch here and I'm sure we'll try to help as best we can .
DL

Ap[ologies -Ignore the above if you're referring to using Velocity miles on VA - I thought you were referring to VS Flying Club miles and flying on VS metal to LHR.
DL

Hi All, thanks so much for all the replies.

Sorry, when I said "VA airmiles" I meant Virgin Atlantic VS airmiles. I'm ignoring any random Velocity (Australia) ones. So this will be VS miles on VS metal. Or, how do I go about searching for availability on codeshare airlines? This is a phone-job isnt it, nothing is displayed online? I've flown Sinapore Airlines before and would rather their A380 economy to VS economy. But redeeming VS miles on SQ surely has to be even more difficult?!

The Virgin Atlantic call centre here in Oz is much smaller than in the UK so I guess I'll have to just sit on hold and hope someone can shed some light. Or get up in the middle of the night and phone the UK call centre!

Am I right in thinking I could never redeem VS miles for upgrades / companion flights on Singapore? So would always be in economy on SQ?

I think what I'm looking at is a combifare of some sort with economy MEL-LHR and then a full price "upgradeable" economy return so I can upgrade to PE or UC using the miles.

Confused!


Thanks

Thanks for clarifying that one. Not necessarily a phone job to VS - yes it will help, but you can garner most of the info needed from the internet (and here of course |:) ) Actually looking back, my previous post is still valid in it's advice.

Looking for availability on codeshare airlines is the same as with VS - you will need to have a look for reward class availability on the airlines site though - to redeem you will need to consult the VS FC page to find our who you need to call (sometimes VS, sometimes the airline you are flying with)

This may help..
http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/fr ... /index.jsp

It will give you redemption amounts, which airlines accept them and how to book.

Nope you cannot upgrade using VS miles with another carrier - only full reward bookings appear to be acceptable with a select group of FC partners.

When you have decided where you want to fly through, which class of travel (I think you are leaning towards PE) and more importantly how much you want to spend, feel free to post here for any further tips and advice y)

Enjoy planning the trip 8D

Thanks again for the help.

It's a no-go through VS, no availability on reward seats or full price seats for upgrade/companion. We extended our search to within a week either side of our intended dates. MEL-LHR 18/6 to 9/7.

The FC helpline lady kindly checked SQ for us which involves creating a booking and waiting for a yay or nay - they had availability on SIN-LHR and LHR-SIN but none on the MEL-SIN or SIN-MEL legs. Might be worth grabbing what we can as suggested, but an economy MEL-SIN return with SQ runs to $1200. Plus the taxes of the SIN-LHR reward flight and we're up at $1500-1600. A full MEL-LHR return on SQ only comes in at $2000ish so we're really not saving much and may as well do that.

I'm 6ft 5 and fit much better in the A380 SQ economy seats than I do on the VS 744 econ seats. UC or even PE upgrades would have been nice for the 15hr leg but I'll check again in the new year to see if any availability has been released.

In the meantime I guess I should buy something from the Shops Away store (thanks for the suggestion - I'm thinking hampers for relatives in the UK!) and reset the clock on the expiry date of the points.


Thanks again