Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Devalues Sweet Spot Redemption

Had you told us about this sweet spot before?

I just redeemed a one-way first class ticket PEK-LHR in June with 37500 Virgin Atlantic miles and a co-pay of 319 USD today. It's also possible to hold the award space for 24 hours so that you can have enough time to transfer points from other programs.

But... you wouldn't want to waste your Virgin Atlantic miles on Air China anyway...

To be honest, I'm not surprised. I'm all for great redemptions, but ~37,000 miles each way for a 10-11 hour flight is too good to be true.

Besides, I wouldn't spend valuable Virgin miles on a carrier like Air China, given other redemption possibilities with ANA, South African, and Delta One Transcontinental. Also, one-way premium economy on Virgin for 17,000 miles + ~$160 in taxes is great as well.

I booked this award for two family members a year ago. Air China failed to recognise the fare class, even when we pointed out the high taxes (>£1,000) we’d paid, and put them in economy.

Over 7 months, I called and sent complaints to Air China UK, Air China Europe, Air China Beijing, each time was fobbed off with “we’re still looking into it”. I filed an official case with the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s dispute resolution body, which has binding powers over airlines, and Air China even ignored them! I now have a judgment in my favour against Air China, but it looks like they may keep ignoring both me and official bodies unless I start legal action.

Is it only air China? I was planning to transfer 120K points to Virgin Atlantic for these sweet spots. Please update.

@John Air China is infamous for dishonoring award tickets. They even cancel confirmed award tickets booked by other partner airlines just before travel dates. They even pretend to be the customer or their relatives and call ANA customer service to cancel tickets in Japanese language, because tickets issued by ANA cannot be cancelled online.

@Debit:

What part of "Just recently Spencer wrote about some of their sweet spot redemptions on partner airlines", complete with live link to that post, didn't you understand?

Why on earth would you fly any mainland Chinese airlines?

@Robert Hanson

What part of "recently wrote is useless to us" fails you?

I work under the premise that bloggers tell us just enough to push their cards. So there maybe other sweet spots that we aren't told. Those are the crown jewels that bloggers keep to themselves.

Miles are dying. The future is pay with points as a bank currency.

Guess I should've known by the title picture, but had a mini-heart attack since I just booked my wife RT to Japan ANA F using VA last week and am planning on booking mine in a day or two (different departure date and confirming time off with work first, or we'd have booked same time)

Let's see...
1. Blog writes gushing circles-'n-arrows post explaining details of a great but little-known loophole/exploit.
2. Days later the loophole/exploit is closed.

I'm sure that these two things are not linked in any way - no cause-and-effect where whatsoever.

"Thanks, Lucky!!!"

@Debit You really are a tedious bore. I get that you find yourself uproariously amusing and ever-so-edgy, but you’re Robinson Crusoe there.

@Adam

Good thing it's easy to ignore comments here. I don't pick oin your comments. Stop being a troll.

@Debit

You ignore comments, and you manage to reply to every one... If this content isn't of interest to you, move on. If you think bloggers are hiding award chart sweet spots, do more research so you beat them to the punch. If you want to take what you're spoon-fed for free, stop complaining about credit card referrals like you've stumbled onto some brilliant insight.

@Rubin the Virgin Atlantic ANA F deal has been public for months and hasn't disappeared. So not sure correlation exactly equals causation there.

@Debit “a troll”?

I’ll need to add “doesn’t understand irony” to your list of tedious flaws.

hmmm, but who wants to take air china anyway. if you don't intend to fly to mainland china, it's common sense to avoid chinese carriers altogether (excluding HK and TW carriers) at all cost.

You guys huffing at Debit are just as absurd as you claim he/she/it is. Who the hell wants a sterile library or a boring boardroom here. Get a life. Life should be comedic and ridiculous sometimes.

Avoid Chinese carriers at all cost?
Not sure I agree

It’s true, they are rough
But sometimes they are the only J or F award tickets available

I’d rather fly China Eastern J than ANA E.

https://www.virginatlantic.com/us/en/flying-club/partners/airlines/air-china.html
Weird, seems like the change is not showing up on their website now

oh my bad, just browser cache