Virgin Atlantic Flying Club is such a quirky frequent flyer program. The program has some amazing sweet spot award redemptions, including for travel on All Nippon Airways and Delta Air Lines. I just redeemed Virgin Atlantic points on another airline for the first time, and wanted to share my experience.
Continue reading: Unicorn: I Redeemed Virgin Atlantic Points On Air New Zealand
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Is this going to be the trip how you celebrate lifetime globalist? Excited to follow along!
Are you taking your newborn? A couple of weeks back, you were concerned about long distance travel, so I'm curious!
Great redemption rate too but the NZ business class seats are terrible. I understand that the space is hard to come by but I see that as a non issue as I (and probably many others) much rather fly Polaris from the west coast to Auckland.
@ Ben
If it's half the cost of the listed roundtrip price and South Pacific to LA is listed as 90,000 wouldn't it be 45,000 and not 62,500?
Agree that the NZ biz seats suck. I would rather pick an airline with better biz seats.
Is anybody at all surprised that Ben was able to get another "unicorn" award that just manages to fit his schedule perfectly. I'm shocked that there is gambling in this establishment.
@ jcil -- Why don't you just spell out what your theory is, please? And for the record, nothing fit my schedule "perfectly." Rather I was just looking for award space (as I often do for fun), I saw this, I booked it, and then I planned a review trip around it.
Looking forward to the hard-earned, long-anticipated sentence that you'll be writing: "Air New Zealand offers a subpar business class hard product"
@ Alex Z -- As I explained in the post, that South Pacific to Los Angeles pricing is based on the (suspended) Rarotonga to Los Angeles route, and not Auckland to Los Angeles, sadly. The award chart is incomplete.
@ Zac -- Hah, as you may have guessed, there is a Hyatt involved here, but it won't be the stay that gets me lifetime Globalist (at least not just yet).
@ Khatl -- Nope, he's staying home, and we're going to start off slower with him when it comes to travel. I'll be taking some very quick review trips for blog content, and won't be dragging anyone along for that.
@ Tom -- Totally true about the seat, though as longtime OMAAT readers know, I don't discriminate when it comes to the quality of premium products I review. 😉
I think it would be helpful to your readers if you mentioned the day of the week for your award flights in general. It's much easier getting a flight on a Tue or Wed for example. That would resolve "schedule" conspiracies 🙂
I mean this is Ben's full-time job. Any availability, unicorn or otherwise fits his schedule.
Great score on the award seat! Much better than mine. I've been booking and rebooking for months to get 2 business seats SEA-AKL-SEA in Spring '23.
The best I have so far is premium economy SEA-PPT(12hrs)-AKL on Air Tahiti Nui for 65K AA miles. The return is AKL-NAN(2 days)-SFO-SEA (J for NAN-SFO only) on Fiji Airways for 55K Alaska miles.
Same. There's nothing LAX/SFO/YVR in Biz to AKL. Been looking for the past month or so. Plenty of DL miles for the locator from SEA if there's no connecting availability.
In January 2020 I found space from Auckland to Chicago on air nz. It was available on United mileage plus and aeroplan but virgin didn’t allow me to book it as that route was specifically excluded. I think it was in the terms and conditions. Would be interesting if anyone had any color on this and whether any other programs have similar exclusions.
I was hoping to use virgin points as I have 10k points orphaned there after they stuffed up my Ana first booking in 2018. They put it on hold for me and then lost it the next day?!
Lol exactly. Everyone moans that you can never find seats etc. they exist if you know how to search. I’ve flown this route on points a week after Christmas. I booked it a week out. Have to have flexibility.
Of course almost nothing exists atm lol. But I’ve flown bus and first class on Qantas for 2-3 passengers multiple times using American and alaskan miles. Including in March this year. Qantas had 9 seats on expert flyer on its new route from New York to Auckland for later this year. Unfort they got gobbled up before american had them listed
Yay! An Air New Zealand review after so many years!!! It’s been ages since you flew them, and I’m excited to see how they’ve kept up so far before they introduce their new cabins in 2025.
We're staying at the Park Hyatt Auckland over New Year's, and since I'm sure that's the Hyatt you'll be reviewing, I can't wait to read your review. 🙂
As a kiwi living in Auckland I have given up on star alliance due to unavailability of Air NZ awards and Singapore/United now too expensive. I use AA/Alaska and have no problems getting flights usually (going to Asia/Europe). I often used to see Air NZ awards on the AKL-TPE flight.
Air NZ actually has a really comfortable sleeping platform and no horrible box to encase your feet. The food is great and if you ignore the stupid seat layout and the insanely poor TV screen it’s a nice flight with plenty of room. Personally I think the newer Singapore seats are worse with tiny foot wells, then again I prefer the older turkish airlines layout without the restrictive foot box.
You could check out the Air NZ site in New Zealand (not the .com American one) as you might find a cheap flight to Queenstown where there is at least one Hyatt SLH.
I recently flew Perth - Auckland - Queenstown and back. I thought the Air NZ business package was awesome. All 3 lounges were great and the 787 biz class seat and service was spectacular. Loved it.
Good on you (as the Aussies would say). I had been trying (and trying) to find business class availability from Auckland to LAX in April 2023 - and nothing. (well, ok - yes but at 200k+ on United.) But one morning I went to Alaska's chart and low and behold I found a flight through Nadi on Fiji Air for 55k. Booked it. Checked half an hour later - nothing available. It is really a game of luck sometimes.