VA Partner points award release

[Gladstone Tim]

Hi,
Wanting to get from BNE-YVR in
J in September using Velocity points. Do partner airlines have specific award seat release dates? Any creative routings to try to get reward seats?

 

[dsotm]

Each partner probably does have a timetable, but sometimes they just randomly release award seats. Last month tons of September/October Qatar flights from ATH-MEL and IST-MEL suddenly appeared on VA's site, then within a week or so they were all gone.

 

[clifford]

Airlines are being pretty miserly at the moment in releasing J seats for next year.

For example, I was looking at availability in J from AU to Europe next year using UA Mileage Plus miles and absolutely nothing came up. Basically because SQ and TG were not releasing anything to UA.

And UA has a pretty good tool allowing you to search on a month by month basis. Makes me wonder if UA miles are worth having.

 

[SheikYerbouti]

Ive been waiting to redeem SQ J SIN-SYD in Mid Oct 2024. There's loads of availability up to 2 Oct, and again after 26 Oct, but nothing in between!

 

[Bagpuss]

Ive been waiting to redeem SQ J SIN-SYD in Mid Oct 2024. There's loads of availability up to 2 Oct, and again after 26 Oct, but nothing in between!

26 October is the seasonal timeable change.

 

[Auski]

Seats Aero is your friend, pay the money which is a small cost compared the flight cost. I recently had an award watch set and managed to get the flight I wanted.

 

[clifford]

Despite what I said above, I found an amazing redemption on QR business class from ATH to ADL in May for 122,000 points and a co-payment of $737.21. I really don't know why this was available, as there were only 2 seats I could choose from, and the cost of the trip if you were paying cash was over $13,000. So, VA, I take my hat off to you..

On a related matter, I found a pretty good redemption with UA Mileage Plus for a couple of weeks earlier in May, for 99,000 miles in business class SYD-BKK (TG), BKK-IST (TG), IST-MAN (TK) with a co-payment of $104. If anyone's interested, this itinerary is also available on 5 May, but on no other date that I could find.