I love searching airline award availability. I could do it all day long, even if I don’t actually plan on flying anywhere. I enjoy trying to make sense of the patterns by which airlines release space, since it’s constantly evolving. Along those lines, I noticed something interesting recently, though admittedly it’s pretty niche.
In this post:
Why I’m redeeming points on Virgin Australia
Long story short, I’m trying to fly from Perth to Sydney for an upcoming trip. Qantas didn’t have any business class award availability for the date I was looking at, and the cash pricing was downright absurd.
Fortunately there’s Virgin Australia. While the airline is only a shell of its former self (it no longer operates long haul flights), it still has a robust network within Australia, and around the South Pacific. Virgin Velocity is Virgin Australia’s loyalty program, though for most of us outside of Australia, those points are tough to come by.
Fortunately Virgin Australia has quite a few airline partners that allow award redemptions, including Air Canada Aeroplan, Etihad Guest, United MileagePlus, and more. Those points are all easy to rack up with transferable points currencies.
As I looked at business class award availability, I noticed something interesting. For Virgin Australia’s cheapest business class award bucket (known as “Business Reward”), Virgin Australia releases at most one award seat per flight. Meanwhile for the most expensive awards (which are revenue based and simply known as “Business”), the airline releases more than one award seat per flight.
So if you search two business class award seats, you’ll either see the higher priced awards through Virgin Australia’s website, or you won’t see any business class award availability through partners.
Unfortunately I was looking for two business class award seats, so I was out of luck… or was I?
How Virgin Australia throttles award availability
I was a little suspicious when I saw that Virgin Australia just consistently has one business class award seat per flight. Why? Because I was looking at some flights in the not-too-distant future, and noticed that every single flight that day had one business class award seat.
Could it really be that not a single person had booked a business class award seat in the market for any flight that day? I thought that was pretty unlikely. I suspected that Virgin Australia was throttling business class award availability, which is to say that the airline may only release one award seat at a time, but may have a habit of then replenishing inventory. To be clear, this is different than the airline just releasing some more award seats as the departure date approaches, which is a common practice.
I put this to the test. I booked one seat with points, and then went to check availability. As expected, there were no more business class award seats on that flight. However, within an hour, a second seat appeared.
Was this just dumb luck, or was there more to this? I decided to try it again on another flight. I booked a seat, and sure enough, within an hour, a second business class award seat opened up. Yep, that meant I could snag two business class award seats on a flight, even though only one initially showed up.
Why airlines throttle award availability
Airlines try to strike a balance when it comes to releasing award availability. While they’re often happy filling empty seats with those redeeming points, they do everything they can to avoid this cannibalizing those who might consider paying cash for such a ticket.
I suspect Virgin Australia’s logic is that the airline hopes that if a pair travels together, maybe they’ll just both pay for business class, or one person will redeem points, while the other might pay cash.
For airlines, the technology to implement this is easy. They can easily set inventory controls, whereby there might be five seats allocated to a particular bucket, but the system only displays one seat a time. Let me also emphasize that you won’t always see a second seat open up, because it could be that you’re actually booking that last seat that was allocated to that fare bucket.
Back in the day I found this to be a pretty common practice among airlines. For example, in the past I remember both Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways frequently throttling award availability. However, that’s not the case anymore.
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other airline that throttles availability in this way, though I’m curious if any OMAAT readers can think of any.
Bottom line
Like I said, this is a niche observation, but I think it’s interesting how Virgin Australia seemingly throttles business class award availability. The airline only makes at most one “saver” business class award seat available at a time. However, in reality the airline is allocating more seats to that inventory, and once a seat is booked, another may very well show up, almost immediately.
If you’re trying to redeem points for Virgin Australia business class, this is definitely something to keep in mind.
What’s your take on how Virgin Australia throttles award availability, and have you noticed this at any other airlines?
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.
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.
One Biz Seat at a time
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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Airlines should only throttle planes and ill-behaved pax. period
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.
Interesting observation and tip - great to know!
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...
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.
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...
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 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 :)
The Aspire lounge at Perth is well worth a look. Its quite new, interesting design, and has great views. I love it.
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...
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.
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.
Probably someone at Delta left the price throttle on full.
Prices have started to break the million mile barrier.
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....
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.
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 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!
At least on the routes I've searched, Malaysia only offers one business class seat per flight.
Worth noting that Virgin Australia has tiny business class cabins on their 737s. Another reason for wanting to throttle availability.
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!
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.