Help please in deciphering Expert Flyer on Virgin flights

[scubabe]

Hi all,

I've just gotten myself a brand spanking shiny new Expert Flyer subscription

I've got some money in a Virgin travel bank that I want to use up, I'd like to visit family in NZ in September.

I've looked at the costs of flying over and back in Business but I'd be out of pocket a fair bit of cash... whereas if I booked Flexi Economy then I could use 9,900 points each way to upgrade only the BNE-AKL legs, and I'd have no cash outlay. Sounds like a little bit of a plan to me...

But I don't want to pay for Flexi seats if there's no upgrade availability.

So! What ticket class is the Virgin class for upgrading from Flexi to Business? I think I read here that it was class U, does that sound about right?

So, if my flights look like this at the moment:
Outbound J7 C7 D7 I7 Y7 B7 H7 K7 L7 E7 N7 V7Q7 T7 M7 U7
Return J7 C7 D7 I7 Y7 B7 H7 K7 L7 E7 N7 V7Q7 T7 M7 U7

then could it be reasonably assumed that I would be safe to purchase Flex Y seats and upgrade immediately to J cabin on points? (I am VFF gold so I am able to do this online apparently?)

Sorry just not sure how trustworthy all this stuff is and if I can't use points to upgrade I'd prefer to just buy the J tickets to begin with and be done with it.

Cheers

 

[Mattg]

The good news for you is that it looks like the upgrade would be likely to clear. The bad news is that Expert Flyer doesn't actually list upgrades/reward seats on Virgin Australia! (It does for Qantas and many other airlines, but not VA.)

With Virgin, the upgrade should clear provided you meet all the criteria (i.e. by booking a Flexi fare) and there is a Business class reward seat available on the flight. You can check for this by searching for Reward Seat availability on the Virgin website. (Make sure it's a "Reward" seat, as sometimes paid fares come up when you search for flights using Points+Pay.)

However, for your reference, Virgin uses the following fare classes for reward seats/upgrades:
Z = Business
P = Premium economy
X = Economy

Qantas uses the following fare classes for its award seats:
P = First
U = Business (I think that's what you were thinking of)
Z = Premium Economy
X = Economy

Without knowing which flight you're on though, I would say there's a pretty good chance that an upgrade will be available on both flights. I is the lowest Business class fare bucket, and there are still 7 (the maximum) seats available out of only 8 in the cabin. I'd hazard a guess that no Business seats have actually been sold yet on either flight.

 

[scubabe]

With Virgin, the upgrade should clear provided you meet all the criteria (i.e. by booking a Flexi fare) and there is a Business class reward seat available on the flight. You can check for this by searching for Reward Seat availability on the Virgin website. (Make sure it's a "Reward" seat, as sometimes paid fares come up when you search for flights using Points+Pay.)

Ahhhhhh I have just clicked! I tried doing that "searching for reward seat availability" as I knew they came from the same fare bucket, and I got zilch results.
But then I realised I was searching BNE-AKL-xx_. I changed my search to BNE-AKL and I can clearly see J reward seats available so I should be fine to book Flexi fare BNE-AKL-xx_ and then just upgrade the BNE-AKL leg on points.

Thanks so much for the clarification on fare buckets! Expert flyer is a little bit daunting when you're new to all of this