tonrob

To be fair have you ever been really comfortable flying long haul overnight in any economy seat? also the seat spec will be a BA thing not an A380 one I'd think, as plane's insides are usually just kitted out to the airlines requirements. I agree about the funny windows upstairs, but am kind of glad the wings are as big as they are (and somebody's got to sit over them).

Other than that can't comment really as all my A380 trips so far have been in F, and none on BA... (all miles-funded, of course!)

newadventure

Hello,
I am after some points advice...currently have 160K Chase Ultimate rewards and 100K Virgin Flying Club miles (plus a few more after returning to UK for Christmas). We (wife and 3 kids) would love to get to Japan for a family trip next summer. We live in Charleston , SC. I believe we can transfer Virgin miles to ANA, but not sure how to go about finding availability for rewards flights. I doubt we have enough miles to get the family over there and back, but if we could get some of the tickets this way, it would be a great help.

Thanks!

Steerpike

Well ... I can't say I've ever been comfortable in coach, but I also don't recall ever being this uncomfortable!

I was on the lower level. I stupidly took the bait and paid for a reserved seat when I bought the ticket, and paid approx $75 for the privilege of a shit seat! I assumed (should have researched ... ) that a window seat almost at the 'front' of the economy cabin would be ahead of the wing and would have a 'view'. Even though I've flown hundreds of times, I still get a kick out of looking out the window, whether it be at the clouds, or the ground below.

tonrob

You can't transfer Virgin Atlantic (VS) miles, but you can spend VS miles on ANA flights by booking them though VS Flying Club. I've never done his myself but I believe I've read it isn't as straightforward as you'd like it to be.

First step would be to find ANA flights that have award availability. Here's a relatively recent blog post on the subject, but there are others.

Here's a thread on Flyertalk where people discuss booking partner airlines using VS miles.

Good luck. Let us know how it turns out.

tonrob

Been looking into this a bit more. For now let's ignore ANA award availability (you want 5 seats, which is a lot) and focus on pricing a little.

It looks like VS doesn't publish partner award charts, but I found a blog post from earlier this year that pulls together info (and which admits it might be out of date) that shows that JFK-NRT-JFK (distance of 13,490 miles according to Great Circle Mapper), economy awards are 65,000 VS miles.

This means that you'd need 65k x 5 = 325k miles for this. You have access to 260k if you were to transfer your Ultimate Rewards to VS miles at a 1:1 ratio, just enough for 4 tickets.

There are a few things to look into and think about:

At minimum you will need to pay cash for one seat
5, or even 4, award seats are generally hard to find (but not impossible) on long-haul trips (but easier in economy) - this observation isn't airline specifics, and things can vary widely by airline and, indeed, route
Don't know what your cabin aspirations are, but it's a long way to Japan and the blogger's VS chart shows business pricing at less than 150% of economy, which is very good value
You need to find out what VS will charge you for taxes and fees, as these have the potential to make economy awards a real waste of miles (calculate your return per mile used in cash terms - I always try to get at least 1.5 cents and hopefully a lot more)
It looks like VS miles can be good value for domestic ANA awards within Japan. Consider just paying cash for your tickets to Japan, VS mils for internal travel and then use UR towards your hotel costs (note there are right - and very wrong - ways to go about this from a value perspective. Have a browse upthread).


Final thought on searching availability. I love Expert Flyer, a subscription-base tool that lets you search airlines' inventory for all sort of things (award tickets, regular tickets, seats, can send alerts etc. when things become available) all in one convenient place. I pay $99 a year and it's worth every cent. There are however 5 day free trials available, so for those looking to piece together something a bit difficult then this might be an option. Note that it does come with some limitations and you do have to work out how to use it. Google is your friend.

newadventure

Hey Tonrob,
Thank you very much for your replies. Interesting reading, and i will follow up your suggested further reading. Some more info: we are almost certain to be flying economy, and will be looking to stay at backpacking hostels rather more than hotels. I know what you mean about VS miles and the taxes - i have accrued these miles from flights back to the UK and am not the only one to wonder what to do with them, so the internal flights might work. Will let you know what we find out
Thanks again
Mick

tonrob

To avoid earning any more VS miles (assuming you want to) had you considered crediting your future UK flights to a different programme?

Programmes you can credit to

List of booking classes

newadventure

Thanks again. I might just do that. Do i still get the tier points for Virgin if i credit flights to a different program or do they get transferred along with the miles?

tonrob

There would be no more earning VS tier points. Don't think of miles as 'transferring', as the transaction never touches Flying Club in the first place in this scenario. Think of Virgin Atlantic (the airline operator) and Flying Club (the frequent flyer programme - FFP) as two entirely separate entities. The airline simply gives a different FFP 'the nod' after you've flown rather than Flying Club. That FFP decides how many miles etc. to award you based on their own terms and conditions along with the type of Virgin ticket you used (cabin + fare class).

The alternative programme you credit to may use 'tier points' or may have an entirely different mechanism from which to award status e.g. 'elite qualifying miles'. Also whether Virgin allows elites from that programme to access the Club Houses is another matter (maybe important depending on whether you fly enough to hit Gold with VS if you credit to them).

newadventure

Hey tonrob,
Ok, that makes sense, thanks for explaining. I just scraped into VS gold this year, but am still relatively new to all of this. I am coming to the conclusion that the two things i wanted my miles to do (the occasional upgrade when flying back to UK alone, and helping out with family holidays) don't really fit with my current strategy! Less important now as am travelling a lot less. But i did enjoy my one and only upper class check in at LHR

tonrob

While I do most of my business flying with BA (for better or, increasingly, worse), I flew so much last year that I just flew BA sufficiently to get gold then focussed the rest of my attention to VS. I wouldn't have flown enough to get VS gold, but you can earn TPs through spend using the Bank of America Virgin Atlantic credit card. $2,500 in a month earns 1 TP, $5,000 earns 2 - maximum 2 per month - so I spent the rest of my way to gold.

I won't bother again, so my VS gold lapses in January, after which I'll mostly fly BA (until they finally make it so horrible that I stop), and only use VS where there is UC miles upgrade availability at time of booking.

tonrob

Mrs tonrob's just hopped on one of the best publicly-available AMEX offers for a few years: Business Platinum card where you get 50K points after spending $5K within 3 months but also another 50K if you spend $10K on top of that within the same timeframe.

There are many benefits that come with the card which outweigh the hefty $450 annual fee in my opinion, but AMEX has recently added another where you can get 50% of you points redeemend when you use the 'pay with points' feature under certain circumtances.

Details of the offer plus an analysis of when to use 'pay with points' contained in this Points Guy post here.

windsock

I was in the same boat a few weeks ago on the A380 - I asked to move, and I was offered a seat way at the back of economy which I was dubious of, and yet the seat was vastly better!

If you have a look at the BA A380 seat map (hover over the seat and to see a picture of it) and you'll see the is a tiny economy section right at the back to the top deck (scroll down for it). Upper deck economy is brilliant, with good views out of the window, and much quieter. Plus only 2 seats in a row, not 3.

Also at check in BA sometimes offer paid upgrades to Premium Economy. At SFO they were offering it for only a couple of hundred dollars when I was there (quite some time ago, alas). Well worth it on a night flight I think!

Hope that helps!

Steerpike

I will certainly pay more attention, should there be another requirement to fly on an A380. I flew back MAN-PHL on a 757 (IIRC) and it was so, so much better! The seats were in a 2, 4, 2 configuration so my window seat only had one neighbor, and the seat was just simply 'more comfortable' for reasons I cannot explain. I think I'll start opting for the aisle seat, though, on these long hauls, especially if I'm going somewhere I've been before.

I also need to remember that splitting a flight like Manchester to Phoenix at Philadelphia means almost half the flight is going to be on a crappy 'domestic' plane. I missed my connection in PHL due to a delay in MAN, and the upshot was, I was squeezed into a middle seat on a shitty old plane for 5 hours!

tonrob

Not a 757 (single aisle) - possibly a 767?

Anyway, a plug here for the overall intent of this thread - to stop people from having to squeeze into shitty seats so often by making trips more affordable, and seats in higher cabins especially so. There is still a lot of opportunity in this game, especially for the creditworthy. These comments not specifically directed at you but at anyone browsing the thread.