Virgin Australia Fare Coding System + other questions.

[Guile99]

Hi guys

Apologies for rather amateur-ish questions.. trying to figure out the whole frequent flyer thing.

1. So from what I've read online. DJ means all domestic and international short haul and VA international long haul?

2. All the various fares seems to be coded by a letter. and all the letters vary depending on the airline? There is no uniform consensus as to which letter would represent which class?

3. How do i find out which fare class letter/code the ticket I'm about to book is?

4. Do reward tickets earn SC points/ miles?

5. If i book a reward ticket on Virgin Atlantic (using flying club miles), will i still earn SC points with Virgin Australia?

6. From a miles for dollar exchange point of view, whats the most cost effective way of spending your miles? Booking reward tickets or upgrading from one class to another?

7. From what i gather, there is no way i can consolidate my kris flyer/ virgin flying club/ qantas miles into one single account with Virgin Australia?

8. Why is this so complicated?

Thanks.

 

[mannej]

Answering question 7, no there is not. Generally you can not transfer points between airline programs.
You are able to credit future flights on Virgin Atlantic and SQ onto your Velocity account, but as QF is the main competitor, you can not.

 

[drewbles]

Hi guys

Apologies for rather amateur-ish questions.. trying to figure out the whole frequent flyer thing.

1. So from what I've read online. DJ means all domestic and international short haul and VA international long haul?

Right now yes but every DJ flight does have a VA code. As they migrate to a single GDS (Sabre) this will all become VA.

2. All the various fares seems to be coded by a letter. and all the letters vary depending on the airline? There is no uniform consensus as to which letter would represent which class?

Each airline uses their own codes in general, although in airline alliances such as Oneworld and Star Alliance, there is commonality between fare buckets (ie, Business full fare is J on Qantas, and on other oneworld carriers too). Virgin's fare buckets are not the same as QF's. Fare buckets within Virgin Australia are consistent though.

3. How do i find out which fare class letter/code the ticket I'm about to book is?

It's not quite so important on Virgin if you're crediting your earn to Virgin. They just have Flexi, Saver and Sale. If crediting to other programs it's important. For Virgin Australia, look on your Itinerary/e-ticket and you'll see 'Class: Business-Z' (in this case, a Business class redemption). The Z is Business class redemption. Whatever this letter is, is the fare bucket you're in.

4. Do reward tickets earn SC points/ miles?

No.

5. If i book a reward ticket on Virgin Atlantic (using flying club miles), will i still earn SC points with Virgin Australia?

No. The fare class that your VS ticket will be booked into will be deemed as ineligible on VA for earn. This is the case for most if not all airlines (they don't like people double-dipping!).

6. From a miles for dollar exchange point of view, whats the most cost effective way of spending your miles? Booking reward tickets or upgrading from one class to another?

That really depends on what you value your miles at, and what you want to do with them. For a lot of people the best value is long haul upgrades, but keep in mind, VA have only *just* in the past week or so introduced this, and you cannot upgrade unless you're Gold or Platinum, and if you're in Discount Economy, there is no provision to upgrade past Premium Economy (Premium can upgrade to Business though).

7. From what i gather, there is no way i can consolidate my kris flyer/ virgin flying club/ qantas miles into one single account with Virgin Australia?

Correct. They're all individual programs. You're best off keeping your eggs in one basket if you don't fly enough to divvy up your earn (I spread mine across 4 programs, but the majority of them to QF or VA, with a good hit to AA and TY as well for various reasons).

8. Why is this so complicated?

It's complicated?

If they made it simple, the value they get from the program would be diminished. People love something for free, so the harder they make it, the more people accumulate points and breakage occurs (eg, they get all these points and then don't bother to do anything with their account for 18 months and the points expire, meaning that's cash in the airlines hand; remember, FF points are a liability to the bottom line of an airline, as they can be redeemed for items of value be it flights, upgrades or things from their online store. The more points on their books, the bigger the liability, the larger exposure they have to bad balance books).

 

[Guile99]

Answering question 7, no there is not. Generally you can not transfer points between airline programs.
You are able to credit future flights on Virgin Atlantic and SQ onto your Velocity account, but as QF is the main competitor, you can not.

yup thats what i gathered.. I've got about 4 different FF programs (Qantas, Virgin Atlantic, Kris Flyer, Velocity) accumulated over the years (all in bottom tier from a status point of view) ( except for Virgin Australia_ Gold and soon platinum) so am trying to burn up each programmes miles by redeeming award flights.

Ive never really paid too much attention with FF programs in the past as i just booked flights mainly depending on their scheduled fly in fly out times.. but have decided to TRY and consolidate miles and points into one single programme and see what perks i get from that! Am up to about 600SC with Velocity since joining in March but have yet to try use any benefits as yet (apart from the lounge once or twice..)

So yeah, just trying to figure it all out now!

 

[serfty]

...
3. How do i find out which fare class letter/code the ticket I'm about to book is?
...

It can be done before booking - on the page titled "Guest Details & travel extras" (the one after selecting flights) look at the HTML source and search for "productElement".

When found, look to the right - it shows the fare bucket codes for the selected flights options.

e.g. var productElement = 'MEL-PER_M_M,PER-MEL_F_F'; Means MEL to PER is in M class and PER to MEL in F class.

 

[carpenteria]

Similary, for long haul VA flights you can check the fare bucket by selecting your flight, hit "book now," and at the next page ("Confirm") if you view the source of the page and search for "popFLIF" you will find after a click or 2 somthing looking like this:

<a href="javascriptopFLIF('201304241115', 'BNE', 'LAX', 'VA', '7', 'Boeing 777-300ER', 'B');" class="flight va ">

That at the end there is your fare code, in this case for a flexi ticket. Same flight on Premium Deal shows this:

<a href="javascriptopFLIF('201304241115', 'BNE', 'LAX', 'VA', '7', 'Boeing 777-300ER', 'R');" class="flight va ">

...Which matches the fare classes over at the velocity page.

Points Earn with Airline Partners | Velocity Frequent Flyer

PS Can someone verify I'm not talking out of my cough? Found this out by looking at the source, not because i have any credible source