Booked, May 9th 2022 it is!

[AntonyJ]

I called back and nabbed that Business seat on the 00:10 flight - so that is my partner all sorted

The only thing now is to keep eye open and see if I can get a First seat for him on the return leg, around May 25th - fine for a day or two either side of that date

[CosmicGirl]

Originally Posted by AntonyJ

I called back and nabbed that Business seat on the 00:10 flight - so that is my partner all sorted

The only thing now is to keep eye open and see if I can get a First seat for him on the return leg, around May 25th - fine for a day or two either side of that date

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I'll keep an eye out. Have you booked anything for yourself?

[AntonyJ]

We have paid for tickets for 9th to 23rd, so will cancel theirs soon, but not straight away, to get money back. Am not doing it straight away in case "better" seats come up on different dates - we are very flexible on dates we go so all things are possible!

One downside of new dates is we land early / mid Thursday afternoon so it now looks like Disney days will be a "post 6pm ticket" for Disneyland that day, and a full day the Friday at DisneySea. Then move into the city, and Shibuya.

So to come back to your original question - I have got paid seats for wrong dates now so will have to change these, but got plenty of time, as now hunting for reward seats for myself on the 11 to 25th or 26th dates.

The day "after" is a possible as they have a flight out at 00:10, which I class as a late one the day before

I have taken a paid sub out for the ExpertFlyer site and their automated tracking and alerts system for reward seats. Put in alerts for my dates, it is a bit of a faff as you have to create an alert per day per flight - so if there are 3 flights per day, there are 3 alerts to be created.

However, they give you loads for paid sub so I have many left over I can use, happy to use them to create alerts for your dates if it helps?

IF you let me know (PM me?) the dates / routes you are looking at, will give it a go

[CosmicGirl]

Originally Posted by AntonyJ

We have paid for tickets for 9th to 23rd, so will cancel theirs soon, but not straight away, to get money back. Am not doing it straight away in case "better" seats come up on different dates - we are very flexible on dates we go so all things are possible!

One downside of new dates is we land early / mid Thursday afternoon so it now looks like Disney days will be a "post 6pm ticket" for Disneyland that day, and a full day the Friday at DisneySea. Then move into the city, and Shibuya.

So to come back to your original question - I have got paid seats for wrong dates now so will have to change these, but got plenty of time, as now hunting for reward seats for myself on the 11 to 25th or 26th dates.

The day "after" is a possible as they have a flight out at 00:10, which I class as a late one the day before

I have taken a paid sub out for the ExpertFlyer site and their automated tracking and alerts system for reward seats. Put in alerts for my dates, it is a bit of a faff as you have to create an alert per day per flight - so if there are 3 flights per day, there are 3 alerts to be created.

However, they give you loads for paid sub so I have many left over I can use, happy to use them to create alerts for your dates if it helps?

IF you let me know (PM me?) the dates / routes you are looking at, will give it a go

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If I were you I'd pin down the J seat on the 0:10 flight on May 27 as a one way. It's not perfect, but it could you give you an extra Disney day if you're partner's all Disney-ed out. Two years ago a couple of attractions that were under refurb came back online around the middle of that week, so it could be worth an extra day in the parks.

Thanks for the EF offer, I'll pm you tonight. I'm currently trying to assemble my Flying Club history since 2018, as Virgin appear to be completely lost and I'm still waiting on the points to be refunded. I've had an EF membership myself in the past but the issue is that the availability they show becomes less reliable for partner awards as time goes on. At the 11-month mark whatever is available to ANA members has been available to partners in my experience. Once past the 11-month window, ANA often has award space which is available to their members but not to partners. So EF will show available seats that partners cannot access. I've found United and Aeroplan to be the most reliable sources.

And as I'm typing this an ANA 777 is flying over the house before landing! It's almost cruel, isn't it.

[AntonyJ]

Should have said - am also looking to see if can reward seats for myself but for dates matching my better half, which will not change unless 2 First seats appear

Did you sort your Flying Club history, it sounds aright pain!

I have found this whole reward flight thing a dark art - I read hat you put but when we went May 2019, I finally nabbed a First class seat for my better half on the flight back, via an alert from EF that arrived via email about 4:30 in morning, and for some reason I woke that time and checked my phone - not something I normally do. Got up, crept to kitchen and made call to grab it! Upto this point I think they only had economy seat.

[CosmicGirl]

Originally Posted by AntonyJ

Should have said - am also looking to see if can reward seats for myself but for dates matching my better half, which will not change unless 2 First seats appear

Did you sort your Flying Club history, it sounds aright pain!

I have found this whole reward flight thing a dark art - I read hat you put but when we went May 2019, I finally nabbed a First class seat for my better half on the flight back, via an alert from EF that arrived via email about 4:30 in morning, and for some reason I woke that time and checked my phone - not something I normally do. Got up, crept to kitchen and made call to grab it! Upto this point I think they only had economy seat.

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Sorry I haven't sent you the pm yet, I got my second dose a couple of days ago and have been feeling a bit under the weather.

Virgin are being an absolute pain, so I'm not in the best mood today. It took 69 hours to get someone to join the conversation on Whatsapp and she was not even properly reading what I wrote. They (third agent now) keep insisting that they refunded the points for a ticket in June 2019, when the (open) ticket wasn't even cancelled until July 9th, 2021. She basically called me liar for an hour without typing the words. I sent her screenshots of my full transaction history since 2018, which took me more than 6 hours to compile from old e-mails and files thanks to their lacking IT system. She wouldn't even look at it. Then she wanted to cancel next year's bookings because she thought those were the missing points! Taking into account the points, taxes, and fees it's a €1200+ ticket and she just said "it was refunded in 2019, there's nothing I can do so if there's nothing else I will close the conversation now". How can they expect customers to just suck it up when they haven't refunded a single cent or mile?

Finally, after I kept insisting and asked for a supervisor she said she found the - hopefully - correct transaction and didn't even apologise for accusing me of being wrong for an hour. Then I asked her to put a hold on the return flights until the points come back, and she refused to, stating that they can't put holds on ANA. So I asked her to issue the tickets, again "not possible". Even though that is exactly what has happened 11 times now for this trip, the last time being just a month ago. They had trouble getting my points back then, too, but they issued the ticket while they sorted out the points in the background. And now she's been ignoring me for 2,5 hours. Mind you, she didn't close the conversation so I can't even start a new one. She's just not responding while it's still open.

Needless to say I'm not the best company to be in today. I've had my issues with Virgin pre-Covid but always thought they had far more competent agents than just about any other airline. So I let them keep our money throughout all this, but now we're being punished for it. If I had cancelled everything last year instead of accepting the open tickets none of this would have happened.
Sorry for venting, you can't help it!

[AntonyJ]

Lordy what a faff you are going through - I just hope you can get it sorted.

I have to say that when I called to nab that First you told me about, and they could not secure the Business return one, they did off to hold the First one for me. I cannot remember how long they said they could do it for (I did ask but have forgotten answer) but it was at least 24 hours.

Now just off to check if I can upgrade him to Frist on way back, and se if any Business seats for me yet...

[CosmicGirl]

Originally Posted by AntonyJ

Lordy what a faff you are going through - I just hope you can get it sorted.

I have to say that when I called to nab that First you told me about, and they could not secure the Business return one, they did off to hold the First one for me. I cannot remember how long they said they could do it for (I did ask but have forgotten answer) but it was at least 24 hours.

Now just off to check if I can upgrade him to Frist on way back, and se if any Business seats for me yet...

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I keep checking Frankfurt, too, in case anything pops up for you. They finally refunded the points so I had another very long call today but we now have return flights in first to Chicago (separate flights on the same day). Now the waiting game begins to try to get on the same flights, preferably from JFK. Or we can hope that they switch Chicago to the new cabin.
Just another tip for you: as others have written on FT, check your bookings using the ticket numbers on saudia.com. My outbound wasn't pulling up there so I had a feeling something was off. Today I had a very competent agent on the line who was willing to check it thoroughly instead of trying to get rid of me as fast as possible. Even though it looked fine to him at first sight, he did find out that something had gone wrong with issueing the ticket when digging deeper. He had it reissued and now all four flights are showing up on Saudia.

[AntonyJ]

Originally Posted by CosmicGirl

I keep checking Frankfurt, too, in case anything pops up for you.

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That is VERY kind of you!
I still have the 2 tickets I purchased for 9th - 23rd May.
Have the reward return for him for 11th - 26th May - but I am calling it a very late flight on 25th as it is just part midnight
Have to cancel the purchased tickets when nailed down dates for reward, but suspect I will be moving one of the purchased flights to the 11/26 dates.

Originally Posted by CosmicGirl

They finally refunded the points so I had another very long call today but we now have return flights in first to Chicago (separate flights on the same day). Now the waiting game begins to try to get on the same flights, preferably from JFK. Or we can hope that they switch Chicago to the new cabin.

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Glad you finally got those points back - it has been a real pain for you, and that you have some good seats, now the game starts as you say to get best possible

Originally Posted by CosmicGirl

Just another tip for you: as others have written on FT, check your bookings using the ticket numbers on saudia.com. My outbound wasn't pulling up there so I had a feeling something was off. Today I had a very competent agent on the line who was willing to check it thoroughly instead of trying to get rid of me as fast as possible. Even though it looked fine to him at first sight, he did find out that something had gone wrong with issueing the ticket when digging deeper. He had it reissued and now all four flights are showing up on Saudia.

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Must admit am not following you here, apologies.
I have not read that thread on FT, like said probably should, but is Saudia not just "another" partner airline like United? Why would you check you reward flight there?

I have not put the booking reference into ANA for reward flights, are you saying if both legs do not show up there, check Saudia? Sorry to be dumb

[CosmicGirl]

Originally Posted by AntonyJ

That is VERY kind of you!
I still have the 2 tickets I purchased for 9th - 23rd May.
Have the reward return for him for 11th - 26th May - but I am calling it a very late flight on 25th as it is just part midnight
Have to cancel the purchased tickets when nailed down dates for reward, but suspect I will be moving one of the purchased flights to the 11/26 dates.



Glad you finally got those points back - it has been a real pain for you, and that you have some good seats, now the game starts as you say to get best possible



Must admit am not following you here, apologies.
I have not read that thread on FT, like said probably should, but is Saudia not just "another" partner airline like United? Why would you check you reward flight there?

I have not put the booking reference into ANA for reward flights, are you saying if both legs do not show up there, check Saudia? Sorry to be dumb

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A booking reference and an e-ticket are two different things. You can have a booking under the reference (6 alphanumeric characters for both Virgin and ANA) but that won't get you anywhere without a valid e-ticket. Most airlines do not present detailed information about your e-ticket on their websites. They just give you the basics.

Saudia.com, however, allows you to check tickets on many other airlines which have nothing to do with Saudia and it'll show you details of your e-ticket that are not visible on, say, Virgin's site. Typically, the Saudia site will show you the status of each flight coupon for each individual flight on your tickets. This is particularly helpful if you have one ticket with multiple connections on multiple airlines. This helped me to get the refund for the ticket I was moaning about, because I could see that even though Virgin had cancelled the booking under the booking reference, they had not cancelled the attached e-ticket. The e-ticket was still showing active and confirmed with all flight coupons good to go. This is the kind of information you can get on the Saudia site which is not available elsewhere, but it only works with the ticket number starting with 932. It won't work with the Virgin booking reference.

For my new booking the reverse had happened: the booking reference was showing everything was ok, both on Virgin's site and ANA's. But Saudia.com was giving me an error when trying to pull it up using the 932-number. That's how I knew that something was up. And someone recently shared a story on the FT thread about showing up at check-in with ANA, only to be told that they had a booking but not a valid e-ticket. They rushed to call Virgin to fix it and just barely made it onto the flight. Everything was looking good with that booking on both Virgin's and ANA's website, but the e-ticket details were the key, and the person had not checked them. Depending on the waiting time for the call center this could cause you to miss the flight.
Having read that story I was not willing to take any risks so I asked the lovely agent I had on the phone yesterday to look into it. He put me on hold for quite some time but they fixed it, so now I can see it on Saudia and everything's as it should be now. The trip status should show as "confirmed" and each individual flight coupon status should be "under airport control" for the ANA rewards booked with Virgin.
With other airlines the coupon status is usually "confirmed" and then it'll change to "airport control" about 24 hours before the flight.

So long story short:
step 1: check Virgin and make sure that everything looks ok with the booking reference, and that you have an e-ticket.
step 2: check the booking on ANA using the ANA reference the agent gave you, or use the 932 ticket number. Pick your seats.
step 3: check the booking on saudia.com using the 932 ticket number, and pay particular attention to the trip status and the coupon status. These should be confirmed and airport control.