VA Booking on SQ - Seat Selection & Premium Economy

[PP075]

With the recent changes to earning Status Credits on VA‑marketed flights — including the 50% cap on partner airlines — it looks like I now need to book my Singapore Airlines flights to Asia through Virgin Australia to retain Platinum.
When doing that, I can only choose Flex or Business fares (when available) on the VA website.
I’m trying to understand what’s actually possible once the booking is made. If anyone has booked a VA‑marketed, SQ‑operated Flex fare and then used the SQ booking reference on Singapore Airlines website:

1. Were you able to select Economy seats with extra legroom on Singapore Airlines and pay for them directly with a credit card?
2. Were you able to upgrade to Premium Economy through Singapore Airlines, select a seat, and pay the fare difference with a credit card?

I’d love to hear from anyone who has tried either option. Is it possible to pay for extra‑legroom seating or to upgrade to Premium Economy on an SQ‑operated flight when the original ticket was booked as a VA Flex fare?

 

[Montien]

When you book a VA-marketed Flex fare, your ticket is issued on Virgin Australia’s ticket stock. While you will receive a secondary Singapore Airlines booking reference (PNR) that allows you to access the "Manage Booking" portal on the SQ website, the actions you can perform there are limited by the original fare rules and ticket ownership.

Regarding seat selection, you are generally able to select standard economy seats for free once you log into the Singapore Airlines portal with your SQ-specific reference. Because a VA Flex fare typically maps to an SQ Economy Flexi fare class in the backend, standard and "Forward Zone" seats are often available at no extra cost. For extra-legroom or exit-row seats, Singapore Airlines usually permits codeshare passengers to purchase these directly through their website using a credit card, provided the seat map is open for your specific flight segment.

The ability to upgrade to Premium Economy is significantly more restricted. Singapore Airlines typically requires the ticket to be on SQ stock to process a cabin upgrade via their website, whether through a paid fare difference or the "mySQupgrade" bidding system. Since your ticket is owned by Virgin Australia, the Singapore Airlines system cannot "reissue" the ticket to a higher cabin class. Furthermore, because Virgin Australia does not currently offer a Premium Economy codeshare product on SQ-operated flights, there is no direct mechanism for them to process this change for you without cancelling the original booking and rebooking into Business Class.

If your primary goal is to retain Platinum status through VA-marketed sectors, you must remain in the original booked class (Economy Flex) or Business Class. Any attempt to "split" the ticket by upgrading a single leg to Premium Economy through a third party or airport standby would likely result in that segment being re-coded, potentially stripping it of the VA flight number and the associated status credit advantages.