Join Virgin Atlantic?

[NM]

This is not strictly true; for F and J award travel you have just as much chance of booking an award flight as ANY OTHER Qantas Frequent Flyer.

As for economy awards, there is an additional allocation for CL/WP/SG but this is really does not vary a great from the standard allocation, especially when bookings are made well in advance.

Additionally, a QF FF Bronze member has exactly the same opportunities as any other QF FF member of securing FF award seats on partner airlines. Keep looking, be flexible with travel dates (mid-week is likely to have more availability than weekends), avoid peak demand times, be flexible and creative with routing and book early. Oh yes, and don't expect to find award seats for a family of 4 (or more) all travelling on the same flights.

 

[serfty]

...Oh yes, and don't expect to find award seats for a family of 4 (or more) all travelling on the same flights.

This is generally the case for F and J awards; however X9 was a common sight when expert flyer shows this particular bucket.

 

[NM]

This is generally the case for F and J awards; however X9 was a common sight when expert flyer shows this particular bucket.

Yes, it can happen for economy. However, we still see media reports of people complaining they cannot use their "hard earned" FF points to take their family of 4 (or more) on their annual vacation. My point is that we should not "expect" to see high numbers of FF award seats on the same flight.

In my experience, the fights that show X9 are normally the lightly booked flights trying to fill seats in he last few weeks before departure. The X availability increases closer to departure date for such flights. I suspect this is partly for the side benefit to QF of being able to boast that they have a large number of FF award seats that go unused.

 

[shutterslide]

Obviously the only actual Virgin Atlantic flights from Australia are from Sydney to Hong Kong and on to London Heathrow. Using your points with Air NZ, Singapore or on the Virgin code share flights share as UK on Malaysia airlines could be an option. With the amount of points you have it could be a great option if you wanted to visit the UK, Virgin Atlantic is a great airline and fun to fly with.

 

[pksw]

Additionally, a QF FF Bronze member has exactly the same opportunities as any other QF FF member of securing FF award seats on partner airlines. Keep looking, be flexible with travel dates (mid-week is likely to have more availability than weekends), avoid peak demand times, be flexible and creative with routing and book early. Oh yes, and don't expect to find award seats for a family of 4 (or more) all travelling on the same flights.

Thanks for the info. The dates I have to travel can be very fixed, which makes it difficult. Most conferences I have to attend run Mon-Fri, so all my flying has to be over the weekend. I've tried redeeming flights such as Melb-LA return business class, but find it's always full. Additionally flights such as Melb-Sing tend to go through Perth or Sydney, and I'd prefer to pay to fly direct. I think I'll just use my QFF points for domestic travel or upgrade requests, and transfer all my Amex points to Virgin (as long as I can get confirmation about point expiry).

 

[blundeni]

As long as you keep using VA, points never expire...they have a 3 year rolling expiry which renews each time you use your account - this includes both adding and using points

 

[blundeni]

I've just used 30k VA points for an Air NZ business class return BNE - AKL. Gave them 4 weeks notice and it was all confirmed inside of 2 days....

They are very easy to use - we've booked 5 trips on Air NZ now via VA - never had one knocked back