Questions and Answers

Hello, folks.
Happy New Year!
I read somewhere that redeeming Etihad guest miles on VA’s domestic awards could be a good value. Looks like I have to find VA award availability directly in VA velocity program. So I was trying to join the Velocity FF program but USA was not an option for selection under the “Country”. Isn’t the Velocity program open to all countries?

Could you please shed some lights on (1) how I can find the VA awards availability, and (2) how to join the VA velocity program?

Thanks.

I think that Velocity has been this way for a while. You could try putting in a dummy address in Australia or try to search using DL which shows VA award space. I have heard EY might not have access to all partner space but probably a good starting point.

I’ve booked VA with an Etihad guest miles. It was easy. Just call. Find availability on Delta. Once you get the ticket load the VA phone app and put in the VA record locator. You can use that for your seat selection as well as checkin.

I think this was my favorite business class flight last year. VA from Perth to Mel. It was only 21,800 Etihad points. I got lucky and transferred from AMEX when they had the 30% bonus so really only paid 17K points. Word of caution: Etihad is mileage based. Not sure where you are going but they publish an amount for each route. MEL-PER is 21,800 while SYD-PER is 32,000.

The phone for Etihad is wrong on their website. See this post for the correct way to contact them.

[URL]http://www.rewardflying.com/report-blog/2016/12/16/virgin-australia-a330-business-class-per-mel[/URL]

You don’t need a Velocity account to search on VA’s own website. No calendar view though.

[QUOTE=”MarkS, post: 24951, member: 2121″]I’ve booked VA with an Etihad guest miles. Once you get the ticket load the VA phone app and put in the VA record locator. You can use that for your seat selection as well as checkin.[/QUOTE]

Is the app “Virgin Australia Flight Specials”? If so, they seem to have removed the ability to manage partner-booked tickets from both the website and the app. Why do they make it so difficult!

Not sure what you mean by “Virgin Australia Flight Specials”. I am referring to the Virgin Australia app from the Appstore (Apple which is what I use, I’m sure they have a chrome app as well) This is the airline app just like any other airline has. Enter the VA booking code into “Find Bookings” . You don’t need Etihad once the ticket is issued. Most programs don’t allow “managing” like changing seats/checkin on partner awards in their app or website. You might view it but as long as it’s on the carriers site that is what you need. Am I misunderstanding what you are trying to do?
[ATTACH=full]418[/ATTACH]

Thanks for the reply. As usual, Android users are left in the lurch with a lame app that is just a mobile web wrapper.