VA Reward flights

[DisneyCupcake]

Originally Posted by DisneyPlanner73

I too am waiting for either Orlando or Jamaica and seeing what is out there. If you pay cash there are direct Virgin flights, using points are only indirect Delta flights. I can’t believe all these seats have already been taken as I am putting in non school holiday dates or they just have a very few number of reward seats released 🤷

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It makes sense at this stage for Virgin only to release a small amount of reward seats and it is quite possible that they are snapped up very quickly regardless of school holidays or not. They need to maximise any potential revenue and need to sell tickets.

Virgin don't state how many they release but to give you an idea until recently BA guaranteed 4 WT and 2 Club seats on each flight. and they announced a couple of weeks ago they increased this to 8 WT, 2 WTP and 4 Club for long haul.

As others suggest it may be worth subscribing to sites like Seatspy in the short term to get notifications of seat releases but they also offer a free service.

Hope you manage to get the seats you are looking for.

[TelfordWolf]

I have noticed recently that Virgin are releasing very few seats and certainly not like they used to pre-pandemic.
If you look for flights to MCO they seem to be even more scarce than normal so it may be interesting for me to try and rebook again for next summer for example.

Lets hope Boris finally lets the airlines actually start flying again damn soon before one of them goes bump... preferably not Virgin as they cant have much money left in the pot... and potentially a whole summer of flights to refund!

[skstorm]

I can see rewards to new york just nothing for Orlando. I am also signed up to seatspy - hopefully they are just waiting for the borders to open (yeah right!)

[loola30]

Strangely, they had stripped out any reward flight from LHR to MCO until 13th August. Just realised that they've put a load back in from 15th July. If I were an optimist, I'd say they were hoping borders might open then. But I'm probably more of a realist...:-(

[LDISNEYFOX]

I really would love to know how this works and how I monitor the seats. I have enough miles to upgrade to Premium and then two rewards to take me to upper class but when I call VA there are never any availability’s. What is the point in collecting these miles and them offering you rewards then you can do nothing with them.

I have never been in the position to do this before and was really excited. Now feel very deflated.
Also they told me I need to pay tax on every seat so it would cost me £1405 with 40,000 miles and a reward? Does that sound about right! ?

[DisneyPlanner73]

This is why I love this site, I had no idea about seatspy, definitely look into this. Thank you.

[Guppy]

Virgin have set “prices” for how much reward flights are but you always have to pay taxes and fees on top of this.

For our flights we’re hoping to get first class return flights using our miles. It will costs 115,000 miles per person and about £500-£1000 per person in taxes/ fees we think.

[Kraken]

Unlike BA, Virgin don't guarantee the number of reward seats available on any flight. There could be many on some flights & none on others. Nor do they release reward seats at the same time for all routes. They wait and see how revenue sales are doing on the flights then their Revenue Management ream decide when to drop reward seats into the system. Very often they trickle-feed them too, so you may see one Upper Class seat released, then sometime later closer to departure, another appears as revenue sales are weak.

If you see a reward seat on the flight you want (even if it's in Economy when you really want Premium / Upper Class, then book it, so at least you are going). As departure date gets closer, check several times a day for reward seats to move you to Premium or Upper Class. As departure date nears, the cheaper fare buckets are no longer available as they normally have a 28 day advance booking requirement. Therefore the cash fares of any unsold seats starts to shoot up, making them less attractive to anyone but business travellers (who more than likely are not paying their own fare). This is when more reward seats can be fed into the system.

The day of departure at the airport can be a good place to look for reward seats. If there are unsold Upper Class seats they will only be sellable on full-fare J class. So a return UK-MCO would be around £6k for cash. The odds of someone rocking up at the airport on the day and buying a £6k ticket at the ticket desk are very slim, so the seat may be released on the day as a reward seat. If it's not, alwats worth asking at the ticket desk as they can call Revenue Management and ask them if they will switch the seat to a reward one. If you're lucky then you can sort the upgrade.

Yes you do have to pay any difference in taxes / fees / charges / APD when upgrading with miles. APD is the killer as soon as you move upwards from Economy as it instantly doubles. The "Carrier Imposed Charge" also increases a fair bit (this is what used to be the fuel surcharge - but as airlines dropped the fuel surcharge they realised they could not afford the hit, so just renamed it).

I can foresee that reward seats on the MCO route will be few and far between, probably for most of 2022. Way too many passengers have had their plans hit by Covid and it's a very popular route, especially at anytime surrounding school holidays. There has been a reduction in capacity on the route thanks to the demise of Thomas Cook & Virgin retiring the 747's. High demand = higher fares and given Virgin's financial situation, they'll sell the seats for cold hard cash. You may get lucky on a reward seat midweek, right in the middle of term-time though.

[Mary A]

Originally Posted by Guppy

Virgin have set “prices” for how much reward flights are but you always have to pay taxes and fees on top of this.

For our flights we’re hoping to get first class return flights using our miles. It will costs 115,000 miles per person and about £500-£1000 per person in taxes/ fees we think.

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2x upper reward seats lhr-lax taxes cost c£1300 for next March/ April

[ChrisS]

Heads up re US connection availability if indirect flights is the only Reward Seat option.

Recently, using banked UC Reward Seats bought in the Nov 2020 50% miles sale, we opted Man-RSW via Atl, 1st Nov out, 28th Apr 2022 return, and there the fun started as, currently, Delta are refusing onward US domestic seats via VS miles, irrespective of route/connection, therefore I booked VS Man to Atl out/JFK to Man home. Using Delta miles I booked US domestic flights to/from RSW costing $22 of fees for both flights. Appreciate another cancellation means we may lose Delta miles/$22, comfortable with that option vs paying circa $500 for tickets.

Original Reward Seats were Man to MCO, but with no availability and car hire uncertainly/possibility of refused a one day/one way drop we opted into RSW where a friend will pick us up.

Delta refused all - Atl to RSW, RSW to Atl, Atl to JFK, RSW to JFK and Mia to JFK. Keep this in mind if wanting to use Reward Seats on indirect flights. We could've had LHR to Mia direct but, again, the car hire situation, there was no direct Mia to LHR for the return.