oglennyboy
Newbie
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2011
- Posts
- 3
Gday all, I’ve got a query about a trip to France and the pros & cons of flying within the FF program or going rogue 
I’ll requalify platinum this month (due date end May), while my wife has no status with Velocity. Got nothing with Qantas except 60SC & 4000 pts from a trip last month. Basically do all my flying with Virgin and reckon I’ll have 80,000 pts by the time I want to go to France in Sept.
After doing a few searches I see there’s not much difference in the way of seat size for economy between all the carriers, although China Air is a little wider. The difference in perceived level of service seems to be on the side of EY/SG (to be expected I guess).
The partners have the benefit of access to lounges, and maybe some of the other perks when booked on VA metal like priority boarding etc. There’s maybe also the chance of points upgrades on EY. And of course it looks like it’s worth about 300-odd SC, a nice jump on next years requal.
However all this comes at a premium of about $1500 for the two return tix. Does anyone have any experience with either the EY/SG trip as Plat & whether there is a good likelihood of upgrades and a distinctly better flying ordeal, or is it pretty much hell in the back no matter what and pocket the $1500 for an extra week in Paris? The stopovers for all are not that bad, 2-4 hours each, except for the return on China Air which is 14hrs in Shanghai, enough for a little day tour or snooze in a hotel.
I see that China Air has a codeshare agreement with Virgin Atlantic, can this be leveraged or finagled into some benefit for my Velocity account, given there is partnership between VA & VS?
Cheers,
glenny
I’ll requalify platinum this month (due date end May), while my wife has no status with Velocity. Got nothing with Qantas except 60SC & 4000 pts from a trip last month. Basically do all my flying with Virgin and reckon I’ll have 80,000 pts by the time I want to go to France in Sept.
After doing a few searches I see there’s not much difference in the way of seat size for economy between all the carriers, although China Air is a little wider. The difference in perceived level of service seems to be on the side of EY/SG (to be expected I guess).
The partners have the benefit of access to lounges, and maybe some of the other perks when booked on VA metal like priority boarding etc. There’s maybe also the chance of points upgrades on EY. And of course it looks like it’s worth about 300-odd SC, a nice jump on next years requal.
However all this comes at a premium of about $1500 for the two return tix. Does anyone have any experience with either the EY/SG trip as Plat & whether there is a good likelihood of upgrades and a distinctly better flying ordeal, or is it pretty much hell in the back no matter what and pocket the $1500 for an extra week in Paris? The stopovers for all are not that bad, 2-4 hours each, except for the return on China Air which is 14hrs in Shanghai, enough for a little day tour or snooze in a hotel.
I see that China Air has a codeshare agreement with Virgin Atlantic, can this be leveraged or finagled into some benefit for my Velocity account, given there is partnership between VA & VS?
Cheers,
glenny
