USA to Australia and back?

Now that VS do not fly to SYD, I'd like to use up some of my miles to book a partner reward redemption.

I'd like to fly from anywhere in the USA to Sydney in business class.

I'm relatively open with my outgoing and return dates (about a fortnight window for both), but so far DL, VA and NZ all have *zero* availability.

Is there another option I'm missing?

Thanks!

NYLON

What about Virgin Australia? They fly from LAX to Australia (Sydney for example).

How about ANA via NRT ?

[Darren Wheeler]

First problem, find a partner that will release a reward seat to another partner.

Thanks for your responses.

ANA will not release rewards to VS at all on that particular route.

Virgin Australia (and Delta, and Air New Zealand) can release reward seats to VS for that route, but they just don't have availability.

Also LAX to SYD on Virgin Australia is quite a large number of miles: 188k return, plus taxes/fees!

Keep in mind you can do LAX-SYD in business return on Fiji Airways (not a bad product at all - ok, not VS UC, true!) for about £2 - £2.5k.

By comparison, should Delta be able to release a seat, it would be 150k return from *NYC* to SYD in business/first.

Appreciate all your help!

NYLON

[Scrooge]

You're running into the same problem I have had with VS for years, while advertising partner airlines is great, actually booking them is a whole different animal.

You could try HA, however, their J class is a bit last century, cradle type seats. The food however is excellent.

The thing I don't quite understand is that there's no easy way for VS CS employees to check what's available without going through every single combination of flight dates with each partner airline.

I don't mind so much, as I just put the phone on speakerphone and do some work. But when you think that - in my experience - the average call for a partner reward redemption seems to last 30-45 minutes, it can't be a good use of their time!

NYLON

You said in an earlier post (concerning ANA LAX-TYO-SYD)

"ANA will not release rewards to VS at all on that particular route."

I'm interested how you found out this. Is there somewhere that I can read that says this, or is it that you've tried several dates and been told 'no'. Or is it you've been told this by Customer services from Virgin?

It's not that I disbelieve you, merely working out how people come to these conclusions....

Peter

Peter,

Regarding LAX-TYO-SYD on ANA using VS miles as a partner redemption: I was told by Virgin Customer Services that reward seats on this specific ANA route are not redeemable against VS miles ever.

I don't know if it was the LAX-TYO leg, or the TYO-SYD leg, or indeed the whole combination that is the problem.

I went and looked at the ANA partner page on the VS website: http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/gb/en/fl ... rways.html

It's not particularly clear, but the fact that Australia is not mentioned at all makes me think that reward seats on ANA flights from TYO to SYD in particular are not released to VS.

I hope this helps.

Best,

NYLON

ANA don't fly to Australia, which is why reward seats are not available.

As for LAX-SYD it is a hard route to get J seats even the airlines own programs (like Air NZ AKL-LAX). Perhaps try BNE or MEL as an entry point or even Hawaiian.

lol, @wwings: that would explain it!

Not that VS Customer Services mentioned this small fact...

[Darren Wheeler]

lol, @wwings: that would explain it!

Not that VS Customer Services mentioned this small fact...

But would you expect them to know that other than by doing a search on the ANA website?

@Darren

Not immediately, no. But having investigated the query for me (for 30 mins or so), it's the kind of thing I'd expect them to mention, yes.