Emirates Award via Partner (Virgin America)

[awardon]

Anyone have experience with award availability on Emirates via Virgin America?

I'm looking for 2 seats in coach on a low traffic route, you would think they would release economy awards given that there are 400+ seats and many unfilled ...

However as far as I can tell they release very little to partners. Any help would be appreciated

TIA

 

[Matt]

Never flown them, but from the number of people who rave about them I'd have to think they release a fair amount to partners..

Not sure if it applies, but I recently booked Virgin America using Virgin Atlantic and the process wasn't very transparent, had to call in to get space.. have you called and asked them?

 

[awardon]

They do have good first class space (comparatively) I was just surprised that awards in coach were so limited.

I did call Virgin America (and it was quite a pain to book partners with them) and they said that there was no availability. What they were seeing fit with what Alaska showed online (although the searches were not exactly the same, I'm looking for MRU-DXB and alaska only searches for MRU-DXB-USA)

I'll continue to check on alaska and hope something opens up closer in

 

[sriki]

I recently booked using Virgin America (VX) miles for travel on Virgin Australia (VA). Few things I want to point out that may or may not exactly apply to your case.

1. The award space VA shows on their website doesn't exactly match with what VX agents see. They see less space. So, it might apply to Emirates too.
2. The number of miles and amount in $ shown for a segment on VX site for partner awards is not always accurate. For eg: BNE-NAN on VA shows up 9.5k + $90 for one way. But, they charged 9.5k + $30. I also had a route that I held (see #3) that showed on their website requiring more points than what the agent quoted me.
3. I had the miles I needed and called in to book a flight and the agent mentioned that the award can be held for 3 days without even having the miles in the account. Something to keep in mind if you see award space pop up but points are not yet transferred (Amex MR is instatransfer; Citi takes 3 days). I lost business class seats on VA to SYD from LAX during Christmas because of the Citi delay and not knowing that I could hold the award (I lost the award by less than 12 hours)

 

[awardon]

Thanks for the tips, that's all very helpful. I didn't know they could hold rewards, they did tell me that Emirates awards most be booked at a minimum 5 days in advance.

Looking into the awards some more it appears that the MRU-DXB route has poor availability while most DXB-USA routes in coach have very good availability. I'll continue to monitor