Hong Kong Airlines - Virgin Australia Partnership

[Rembrandt]

Thanks everyone for the explanations regarding the difficulty of seat reservations. Much appreciated. I now understand that integrating with a proprietary Chinese system to reserve seating isn’t straightforward. Having worked in IT across various roles for over 30 years, I’m well aware of the challenges involved in system interoperability.

What I still find a bit confusing (and please correct me if I’m mistaken) is that I can easily book reward seats on Hong Kong Airlines through VA online, yet I need to call VA to book reward seats on Hainan Airlines. I would have expected these to operate through similar systems, but clearly that’s not the case. This is why I find it easier to book reward seats through Chinese airlines with QFF, it can all be done online (maybe not seat reservation). And the new search tool makes the process even easier.

 

[ben95]

can easily book reward seats on Hong Kong Airlines through VA online, yet I need to call VA to book reward seats on Hainan Airlines

Also while you can book HK airlines economy online you can only book HK airlines business rewards seat by calling VA. Very inconsistent and annoying for sure

I suspect this is because VA’s website is open to scarping by bots, and HK airline / hainan do not want bot scraping their rewards inventory via the VA website