What Happened To Virgin Australia Business Class Award Space?

Plenty of availability via Velocity's site for travel to LA so it's possible they're keeping it more exclusive to their members than for Deltas site. Even a couple of weeks out you can often find routes from the east coast of Oz. I'm happy to be a Velocity member and redeem around 10 times a year with them as well as EY flights.

I've redeemed for two trips, including a long Australia visit and recently my honeymoon to Bali (connected in Brisbane). Both trips were in biz row 5 and it was a great use of Delta miles. Bummed to see this be the new norm.

Amex Velocity card has been offering 100k signup bonus so it could be a combination of the new product, glut of points and a temporary reduction of released award seats while the spike of points works their way out of the system.

CX F/J LAX-HKG-SYD/BNE could be a good non-direct method. That's what I have booked for next year.

I would have assumed that in upgrading their fleet with the new business class, it would entail taking planes out of service and thus losing capacity?

How's last minute space looking?

So Lucky, given your team's keen eye on award availability, what are the most practical premium class award routings to Australia, in terms of availability right now, from each of the three major alliances?

Glad I snagged an 80K business class flight a month ago for this December. Yikes! Not good. Haven't flown Virgin Australia before, looking forward to it.

"While it doesn’t represent a capacity reduction, it is possible that they’re trying to make an effort to sell more seats."

I thought you said previously that the number of seats per plane will be reduced with the new product? Why would that not affect availability?

Although I see mention here of someone redeeming 80k a month ago, from my tracking (and I was tracking), the awards were 100% removed on or about 27 July. I mentioned this in another comment I left for Tiffany back in early August.

@TravelinWilly, According to my award redemption email from Delta, I redeemed it on August 6th. So a bit over a month ago. Not sure if that helps.

I haven't been bothering earning skymiles of late anyway. Even still, I will miss this option going forward if this is the new normal. Australia in Biz Class is the sole reason I started earning miles. I can manage in economy if it comes to it, I've done it before. I'd just prefer not to. Glad I booked my flight to Australia via Asia a few days before Dividend Miles disappeared.

@Caroline, thanks for the data point! I'm guessing you lucked out somehow. When I was looking in late July it was WIDE open to anywhere in Oz via LAX, then poof! Gone. Very glad you were able to book. I ended up booking EK/EY 1st class to get there - it's a nice way to go, but I had really wanted to use up my stagnating 160,000 DL points!

@TravelinWilly, I am too! Haha. I totally understand wanting to get rid of the stagnating Delta points. Enjoy Oz!

I see plenty of business class seats on Alaska air to Brisbane and SYD. I thought Alaska pulls from the same AA inventory? I already booked Virgin seats for next year figuring that space could dry up. That does happen from time to time.

@Caroline. Delta is always a punching bag. There are some major sweet spots. With AA MIA-LHR they will stick you on BA, usually not non stop and huge fuel surcharges.

Delta has decent Availability on Virgin with ZERO Fuel surcharges. Coach seats all the time 30K each way.

In the past year using Delta I got : ATL-JNB 2 seats business at 160K, 2 trips one way London in Virgin Upper Class 62.5 one way per ticket no BA surcharges, AMS-MIA 62.5, and two business class to Australia for next year at 160K per. They are not stagnating for me. Ever look at the UA award chart lately? Ever try to go to South Africa with American?

Rob

@robertw477, I hear what you're saying, surely. Delta is my go-to airline and where a majority of my points were amassed. I was replying to another comment about them and "stagnating" was in regards to the devaluation and lack of understanding how many points are need b/c of unpublished award charts. I'm glad you've snagged great options that are available with them and I'm glad I have too.

It's not Virgin Australia but I just canceled an AAdvantage award from AUH to LAX - Oct 18. Hope this is useful for someone.

Meant to say 3 seats in business class

Virgin Australia's 777 re-fit programme kicks in when it cancels these services to free up a plane for refurbishment:

VA29 SYD-AUH from 27 October 2015 to VA30 AUH-SYD 16 December 2015
VA29 SYD-AUH from 02 February 2016 to VA30 AUH-SYD 06 April 2016

So likely two planes will be done by Christmas, with the remaining three in the new year.

Yet close-in award space still hasn't been great (even though it will be the old product).

Has anyone checked award availability from virgin America ?

It's probably to do with the seat refurbs.

I was able to snag JFK-LAX-SYD in F on AA/QF for early August 2016 using 72.5K AA miles + $26.20. I had been checking DL as I wanted to burn some of my Skypesos and since I couldn't find VA space to LAX, for the fun of it tried SYD-JFK, and found plenty of 80K J seats available on KE SYD-ICN-JFK. These have totally disappeared as well. I'm hoping VA makes inventory available again - I flew them roundtrip LAX-SYD a few years ago (sadly when DL still applied fuel surcharges) and had very enjoyable flights. Otherwise, I'll be flying home on 2 award tickets. Either SYD-HKG-JFK or MEL-DXB-LHR-JFK. I'm going to wait it out for a while and see what, if anything, turns up.

Hi Lucky,

How to check availability space on Virgin Australia award ? if i use virgin australia Frequent flyer website, will the space availability same if i redeem using krisflyer miles ?

Thanks,

Rio