Booking direct flights with miles ended? (and miles+money)

Hi everyone,

I have been booking flights with flyer club miles for around 7-8 years now.

I have now been trying to book a direct flight to the USA (Vegas preferred) for several weeks now and not one single direct flight comes up in the search for anywhere that I tried in spring 2019.

In the past there have always been plenty of dates to choose from, but this time round, there are literally zero direct flight reward seats to Vegas, LA, California or Florida in 2019 (including off-peak dates)

What has happened to the reward seats, are they now gone for good?

Also the option to book with miles plus money no longer works. You can select it from the home page, but then when the search results appear, the miles+money option disappears for any location on any date, you can now only chose money or miles.

Feeling quite frustrated now as I have always gone to great lengths to earn as many miles as possible, and now I can't spend them.

Are there any "secret" ways of finding reward flights?

Thanks

Xav

Well I just tried a dummy booking for April from London to Las Vegas and there were reward seats in every class, and for only Premium had a few days blanked out.
Check each leg as a one way, and be date flexible.
What dates are you looking for?

Dick D

Are your searching from LGW? If so you won't find anything at all as the flight is moving to LHR next year.

I forgot to add, I was searching from Manchester (MAN) which is my usual departure choice.

I didn't think to search from London (as well I'd rather not have to add a few hours onto the trip) so it would appear that the problem is specifically from Manchester then

Hi there,

Just last Sunday I have managed to book 8 economy rewards from Manchester to Orlando and return Newark to Heathrow so they are definitely available. I also searched for premium availability and could find none to the states but have managed to get 4 premium to Hong Kong for this November. I wonder if the lack of availability West wards is something to do with the Ex air Berlin planes

[mitchja]

Welcome to V-Flyer

MpM (miles+money) fares do work slightly differently now. There are no specific MpM fares now like there used to be.

As long as you are logged into your Flying Club account during the online booking process, any revenue fare can now be a MpM fare. During the online booking process are are given the option apply miles to the booking to reduce the cost.

For every 3000 miles you put towards the fare, it reduces the base fare cost by £18.00. There is no limit to how many miles you can put towards a fare.

The added advantage of this newer system is that you will earn miles and tier points on the fare as well.

For example I recently booked an Upper Class 'I' fare and used some of my miles to bring the cost down to roughly what a 'Z' fare would have cost (there where no Z fares left on the MAN>JFK route I wanted).

Good idea to give them a ring. I just booked PE rewards to HKG and the available dates shown online were very limited. When I spoke to them on the phone, the dates available were showing as not available online.

Thanks guys, I will give them a call then and try that way.

Also thankyou for explaining about miles + money. It's a shame that Virgin don't make it clear on their site, but that makes sense now, and is at least another option for me now

Thank you so much for letting me know about the Miles plus money situation! I was trying to do the new reward redemption with my Virgin money card and it is pants!
I am currently a Silver member so tried to use my reward today on the phone - they haven't really got it all up and running yet but basically said the companion is the same as the old system as in it is based on the flexible price, which if you are stuck with a companion flight in your class (silver is premium or economy) then it isn't really worth the bother. So I am going to just rinse my miles using the miles and money so I can stay in silver.

Diana