Velocity reward seats on Etihad to Europe

[davidhes]

I've had good luck booking 4 seats together on EY using VA points. Search using Etihad's reward seat tool:

Book flights with Etihad Guest Miles - Etihad Airways

VA availability has historically matched availability with what is showing on EY - unfortunately that is no longer the case. Also EY redemptions go up in price from 1 June...

A guide to SQ upgrades can be found here:

Singapore Airlines business class upgrade guide - Australian Business Traveller

Thanks for your help. I have tried Etihad site to do a dummy check and can't find any days in March/early April where I can get 4 guest business seats. That's trying Abu Dhabi to Rome/Zurich/Munich/Paris/London. So unfortunately unless their availability gets better, even before trying to get virgin to match it, I think we are out of luck.

Pretty happy with the Singapore upgrade option though. Will only cost us ~$1700 per person for Flexi economy from Manchester to Brisbane. Then only 74587 velocity points to upgrade the long leg once converted and after the 15% discount. 109000 velocity points and $500 of taxes on the way over.

So all up per person it is ~183000 velocity points and $2200 for return business (excluding Singapore to Brisbane). Or can also upgrade that leg for about an extra 12000 velocity points. And I would get 280 status credits which should be enough to keep my gold with my other credits. At worst I would need another 20.

This option is way better than spending $2300 per person for PE on the way back.

 

[greenfish]

Thanks for your help. I have tried Etihad site to do a dummy check and can't find any days in March/early April where I can get 4 guest business seats. That's trying Abu Dhabi to Rome/Zurich/Munich/Paris/London. So unfortunately unless their availability gets better, even before trying to get virgin to match it, I think we are out of luck.

Pretty happy with the Singapore upgrade option though. Will only cost us ~$1700 per person for Flexi economy from Manchester to Brisbane. Then only 74587 velocity points to upgrade the long leg once converted and after the 15% discount. 109000 velocity points and $500 of taxes on the way over.

So all up per person it is ~183000 velocity points and $2200 for return business (excluding Singapore to Brisbane). Or can also upgrade that leg for about an extra 12000 velocity points. And I would get 280 status credits which should be enough to keep my gold with my other credits. At worst I would need another 20.

This option is way better than spending $2300 per person for PE on the way back.

I'm pretty sure there'll be some extra taxes from the UK for the upgrade as the APD goes through the roof for long haul J (I haven't ever tried as I never fly directly back from the UK).

EY availability will improve, but perhaps not worth the risk of waiting. Another thought - you could perhaps for for some F seats as well - so have 2 in J, 2 in F? EY unfortunately don't release much F to start with, but it does appear later on.

 

[davidhes]

I'm pretty sure there'll be some extra taxes from the UK for the upgrade as the APD goes through the roof for long haul J (I haven't ever tried as I never fly directly back from the UK).

EY availability will improve, but perhaps not worth the risk of waiting. Another thought - you could perhaps for for some F seats as well - so have 2 in J, 2 in F? EY unfortunately don't release much F to start with, but it does appear later on.

Yeh don't think we want to risk it. With 4 seats available on a couple of Singapore flights we might as well lock that down.

 

[davidhes]

Ok guys good news, we are back to almost my original plan haha. Called Velocity this morning to check availability on the furthest ahead I could book on Brisbane to Munich/Rome/Zurich. I could get 5 seats on pretty much all flights. Including if we had to go via Sydney or Melbourne. And there was 5 seats on the connecting AUH to Munich/Rome/Zurich legs. So seems like all of a sudden there is more availability from when I asked a week ago. So not only should we be able to get business seats for each couple, we should even be able to get seats on the same flight. As long as we are online the minute they open for the date we need, fly out on the 22/4/17. So that will be 250,000 points per couple 1 way and around $200 in fees. More points than Singapore but $800 less in fees.

Now the other good thing is we should have enough points to upgrade to business on the return flight. My friend and his wife have signed up to Amex from my link. They will get their cards this week and hit the $500 spend straight away. Then they just have to wait a month for the points to transfer. Bit of a risk for them of the reward seats being available still as they will have been open for a couple of weeks for our return date. I'll be booking straight away though haha. If we book fully flex Y tickets on Singapore from Manchester/Paris/London it will be around $3100 per couple and 149,175 points to upgrade the long leg. This will also allow me to get close to enough status credits to keep my gold active and we will get around 20k of points.

Total per couple of just under 400,000 points and around $3500. Worst case economy on the way back if we can't get the upgrades. Or we just pay the extra to go up to premium economy. Anyway I will report back in a couple of weeks when the flights are available with how we go. Thanks for your help so far.