Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club frequent flyer program has just introduced a useful new feature, which I wish we’d see more airlines offer.
In this post:
Virgin Atlantic’s award calendar search feature
It’s always great when airlines make it easy to search and book award space, and that’s exactly what Virgin Atlantic has done with its new tool. Virgin Atlantic has overhauled the way that it displays award seat availability, and I’d consider this to be a genuine improvement.
Effective immediately you can use a tool known as the Reward Flight Checker, which provides a clear, accurate overview of all reward seats available by destination. This provides a daily view of seats for each calendar month, split across all three cabins. It also shows all Virgin Atlantic and Delta award availability to and from the UK.
To start, you’ll just want to select the airline you want to fly, where you want to travel from and to, and which month you first want to search.
The next page will show you how many award seats are available in each cabin on each day. You can then also easily navigate to the month before or after, so you could see award seats for the entire schedule in a matter of seconds.
Once customers have chosen their reward seats, they’ll need to navigate back to the current search feature to actually book their ticket. So nothing is being taken away here, as you can still search and book award availability as before.
This really is one of the most well executed award search features I’ve ever seen from an airline. While some airlines have award calendars, you’ll almost never see a calendar that shows availability in multiple cabins, and also shows you exactly how many seats are available.
This pairs nicely with Virgin Atlantic’s award seat guarantee
One of the awesome things about Virgin Atlantic Flying Club is that the program guarantees a minimum number of award seats on each flight as soon as the schedule opens:
- There are at least two Upper Class (business class) award seats
- There are at least two Premium (premium economy) award seats
- There are at least eight economy award seats
This is a valuable feature, given how many airlines don’t open any award space when the schedule opens. Then again, the catch is that Virgin Atlantic has hefty carrier imposed surcharges on award tickets, so you’re going to be paying more than just points for these tickets…
Bottom line
Virgin Atlantic has rolled out a new Reward Seat Checker feature, whereby you can easily see all the award seats available in all cabins to a destination for a month at a time. I can’t think of any other airline that has such an easy to use award search, so huge kudos to Virgin Atlantic on this initiative.
What do you make of the Virgin Atlantic Reward Seat Checker?
Sadly, altering the web address hack is not working as of this morning. Hope it comes back, what a great tool!
Am I the only one who doesn’t want to see award space get really easy to search for?
One of the reasons why playing the points game is worth it is because so many don’t bother. The PITA finding award space (even relative to availability) is one reason.
I don’t mind having the search process a bit more complicated if it reduces competition for seats…
100% agreed!
No. Easy search tools are good.
Agree - this devalues the likes of the excellent Seatspy.com website which was a handy way of checking availability but wasn't something non-experienced users knew about.
I have no problem with the Virgin added fees. Sure they could be lower, so could everything. But you're getting a hell of a deal on an upper class ticket paying only $800+ for a one way ticket. Don't forget that the UK's crazy APD charges are included in this.
Their fees are in no way okay.
If there is an £900 fee, >£600 of it is airline fictional fees, ~£160 is the APD racket and the rest the other charges and taxes.
@Ben quite rightly a few comments call out the outrageous carrier imposed charges plus the APD levy, not sure if your aware that the U.K. government are making changes to the APD from the 1st April including increasing the amount and an introduction of new bands. I know you’ve covered this subject before, here is a link to the upcoming revisions;
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-and-allowances-for-air-passenger-duty
this will probably get patched pretty quickly, so might as well flag it while it works - if you update the airport codes in the URL, you can search for all Delta award availability, regardless of route.
e.g. JFK to LAX in April:
https://travelplus.virginatlantic.com/reward-flight-finder/results/month?origin=JFK&destination=LAX&airline=DL&month=04&year=2023
It appears you can edit the origin and destination in the URL to see non-UK routes
You're correct. And it shows just how crappy Delta award availability with VA is. There are exactly zero business awards from JFK to CDG, JFK to CDG, ATL to CDG, DTW to AMS, or TLV to JFK (I stopped looking after those searches). I didn't find a single Delta business class award available with VA points. I mean, if you're using your points for economy, good for you, but for those of us looking for...
You're correct. And it shows just how crappy Delta award availability with VA is. There are exactly zero business awards from JFK to CDG, JFK to CDG, ATL to CDG, DTW to AMS, or TLV to JFK (I stopped looking after those searches). I didn't find a single Delta business class award available with VA points. I mean, if you're using your points for economy, good for you, but for those of us looking for business awards without paying ludicrous taxes or fuel surcharges, probably better off looking elsewhere.
Virgin Atlantic must be called out for its egregious carrier imposed fees which render the idea of a “free” award ticket completely ephemeral and more like giving you an upgrade with a full economy fare at much reduced availability. Lots of airlines take advantage in this regard but Virgin Atlantic really has no shame about it. A program that is barely worth a damn.
I appreciate the step in the right direction, but this is completely worthless as it only shows direct flights to and from the UK, with the ludicrous taxes. If they could make this show all their partners (fingers crossed for ANA first!), and all the destinations, then suddenly Virgin Atlantic's point searching would go from probably the worst in the world to the best.
I cannot imagine using Virgin with their exorbitant taxes but what a breath of fresh air for an airline to create a calendar like this that makes it easier for people to use their points. Maybe they are doing it because they know nobody will use their points?? LOL
Yeah well fine but the points FROM LHR(etc...) come at a ridiculous cost. Two Upper Class seats are certainly available for only 115,000 points......plus $1256...each.
Is it cheaper than straight cash? Yes, by a mile but no one is paying almost $13,000 for a one-way LHR-ATL
the trick to show DL availability on non UK routes have already been patched. The calendar now returns an error if the o&d is not between the US and the UK