My experience. Beware, long post.
The details:
Original booking was MEL-LAX-SFO-LAS-LAX-MEL, I've been Gold for 4 years with ~850k points in the kitty. Waitlisted for both long-haul legs via call centre as reservation was booked through CTM.
MEL-LAX:
I created an ExpertFlyer account, setup alerts and monitored the flight availability through EF and the VA website from about 7 days prior. From ~4 days prior I called each day to check availability and was told to keep checking daily. There were still 13 seats/fares available <24 hrs out but still no reward seats showing. I called and the lady gave the same spiel about no reward seats available but proceeded to place me on hold to "look into this further"… ~5 mins later, “Upgrade confirmed, enjoy your flight”. Completely did not expect that as I thought they have "zero capability to unlock reward seats". I continued to monitor through VA/EF and no reward seats became available but the cabin did fill up with only a 4-5 seats spare.
LAX-MEL:
This one was very interesting! J completely sold out and only 2-3 fares showing for PE. I monitored the other flights through SYD/BNE but didn’t have high hopes, both had <3 J available.
1) 24 hours out and EF showing 3x J fares to BNE with the seat map only showing 1 available seat.
2) VA website listed 3x J fares.
3) VA website shows reward availability for LAX-BNE-MEL for only a single connecting option which was a 2 hour layover in BNE.
4) No reward seat available for the earliest connecting flight which was a 1 hour layover.
5) Thinking this was because of domestic availability, searching on VA website one-way LAX-BNE shows NO reward seats. Same search LAX-MEL, low and behold one reward shows.
6) EF still shows zip.
7) Call up to check about this availability and they say there is no availability for VA8. Pushing them harder and force them to check on the VA website themselves netted me a long, long phone call but they confirmed they will honour an upgrade if I change my flight which required me to go through CTM.
8) After changing the flight, went through the whole rigmarole of no-yes-no-yes with the next agent even though they stipulated this anomaly in the notes of my booking.
9) After a long hold, they confirmed the upgrade.
10) I monitored the flight, EF still showed 3x J fares but a full seat map. VA website still showed reward availability right up until you could no longer book. The cabin was full.
There really is no single source of correct information. I mean, the system the agent is looking at shows no reward fares but the VA website does really illustrates some core issues in their systems.
I don’t know if I as lucky or any of the factors mentioned had any influence at all. My only take from this was don’t give up!
