Virgin Australia Award Tickets: An Interesting Trick

I had used this trick on TG a few years ago and managed to get up to 6 people on their 747 in Business when they still had it. They would only release 2 seats at a time but would replenish straight away. So it's not a unique practice to VA.

I wish I could have considered Virgin Australia when I booked my upcoming Australia trip. They are so so so so so much better than Qantas, but I wanted to burn down my BA Avios.

Great tip, though, thanks!

Worth noting that Virgin Australia has tiny business class cabins on their 737s. Another reason for wanting to throttle availability.

At least on the routes I've searched, Malaysia only offers one business class seat per flight.

I assume this means you took the sensible route to fly VA rather than paying $2000+ to fly Qantas.

Whilst the QF hard product is superior in every way, I'm sure the soft product with VA will be good (the Thai green currey is excellent if it's offered). And QF having a better product and same points requirements doesn't matter if you can't ever find availability!

I trust we'll be getting a review of the VA lounge in Perth as well?

I actually noticed this type of throttling when trying to book RJ (JFK-AMM) award tickets via AA two months ago. Admittedly this was in economy though. Saw that there was only 1 seat available when I needed 2. I went ahead and booked the 1 available seat... an hour or two later, noticed that another economy seat popped up. Happily, I booked that one too. Later on, I saw yet another economy seat open up. Not sure if this is normal behavior with RJ though, as other routes I didn't see the same behavior.

Probably someone at Delta left the price throttle on full.
Prices have started to break the million mile barrier.

I'd advice you to still keep an eye on QF on the BA website. Availability opens up upto 2 days before travel if my recent experience with them is anything to go by.

I suspect that Philippine Airlines throttles some business class awards booked through ANA. I was looking for two J seats RT from Honolulu to Manila in December and January. Seats were available consistently almost every day, 2 in economy and 1 in business. PR has been having operational troubles and were hit hard by the pandemic. I didn't think to do a test booking at the time, but I would be surprised if these planes are getting filled up with cash customers or award redemptions.

The Aspire lounge at Perth is well worth a look. Its quite new, interesting design, and has great views. I love it.

Makes sense to me that they’d do this. You’ve put a lot of work into a 3hr flight which will be sun standard. Not worth the United points! Can fly Sydney to Brisbane on virgin in business and then on to taipei on Eva for 57.5k United miles 🙂

On a recent Delta flight from ORD/ATL/SJU they had 6 open business seats. At t-24 they dropped to 33k each, but only 2 were available. The rest were 68k. I grabbed 2 knowing I could cancel if necessary but I needed 4 and thought maybe the rest would drop. An hour later 2 more dropped to 38k so I grabbed those. The "net" for each was 35k which I was ok with considering I paid around 20k for economy on a AA/JetBlue codeshare flight with an insanely tight connection that I was sure to miss anyhow. Was happy for the nice lounge break at ATL and the much more certain connection. I think wifi was free too unlike AA. So maybe Delta does this too. I saw a ton of rapidly changing prices for award seats at T-48 and then even more erratic at T-24 for that trip.

Makes sense for Virgin Australia to 'throttle' award seat availability given their 8 seat premium cabin compared to 12 on Qantas. And as a domestic frequent flier on both airlines for two solid decades, I prefer VF by far, even in its slimmed down reincarnation. Their product matches their pricing levels and the customer service is superlative and exceeds QF by a country mile. QF certainly has a nice product (but is it really THAT much better than VA?? Answer: No) but absurdly overpriced even before covid, ukraine war, inflation, supply chain issues [insert your preferred excuse]. Lucky is not the only one to think QF is rapaciously overpriced.

Did I just say VF? Of course that should've been VA.

Interesting observation and tip - great to know!

I'd suggest searching the Virgin website first for reward seats - you don't need an account. If you see two seats available then most likely they'll release two in the method you describe above. It'll help differentiate the scenario where there is in fact only one reward seat available.

Airlines should only throttle planes and ill-behaved pax. period

Thanks for the tip. I've flown domestic business class dozens of times on Qantas and Virgin Australia and VA is far and away the better business product.

Glad to see you’ve come to your senses and take VA over QF 🙂 Only flew them yesterday, somehow we didn’t get pre-departure drinks but I think that was an oversight as boarding was tight and quick.

I find the Perth VA Lounge is superior to the Qantas Club, and at least on a par with the Qantas Business Lounge.

The main reason is that VA has its FIFO operations in a separate terminal, so the VA Lounge isn't overrun with the hi-viz brigade whenever it's shift change at the mines.

I second the opinion on the Thai green curry!

That’s interesting to know and I hope it’s a practice JAL operates on their first class availability from DFW to HND/NRT. I only see one seat available in first class with Cathay Pacific and I’m afraid I won’t find 2 seats availability for my wife and I.

Loved this article, it makes a lot of sense! However I did recently book two SQ Biz seats DPS-SIN-SYD with Velocity points as an Amex transfer. Both seats actually did show on this route at the saver level at 78000 points for me and my partner each. I’m Platinum velocity but both these seats were publicly available, just booked through the VA call centre. I’ve done a few bookings domestically as well where we can book together, perhaps worth a call Lucky?

This practice of coercing you to pay cash for a seat is not only for Business class. Having flight credits is also near impossible to book a seat as I found out when trying to book flights to Queenstown from Brisbane. Use your credit? No seats available, but part with the dollars and suddenly plenty of vacant seats. I really believe Virgin Australia has no intention of honouring these credits as it doesn't seem to matter where I try to book, either domestic or the few international destinations on offer, never any seats available until you try to book not using your credits then plenty of opportunities.

This isn’t the standard for all routes with VA. East coast, up to four reward seats per flight is common.

Hard product is similar to Qantas 737 flights, sort product better across the board imo.

One Biz Seat at a time

I saw air new zealand do this just a couple of months ago. I was looking for a flight for 2 people from SFO to AKL, and there was business class availability on the date we needed, but only 1 seat. I took a gamble and booked one of them. The next day, a second seat opened and I grabbed it too. A third seat actually opened the day after that but we didn't need it.

Has anyone had experience successfully booking United Business Class using VA points? Every time I look for award seats on the VA website, it only shows flights with Business award seats for 1.5 million points instead of 95,500, while there are plenty in economy. I did find some J seats on SQ via SIN for 139,000 points.

Hi
I have booked 4 virgin business reward seats within the last 6 months. 2 x trips Syd - Per, 2 seats each trip. I have never experienced in throttling of Business R/seats by Virgin. Both flights on 737-800.
Thanks Virgin