{"id":19408,"date":"2024-05-27T23:15:04","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T22:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/?p=19408"},"modified":"2024-05-27T23:15:05","modified_gmt":"2024-05-27T22:15:05","slug":"virgin-atlantics-phantom-partner-award-tickets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/2024\/05\/27\/virgin-atlantics-phantom-partner-award-tickets\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Atlantic&#8217;s phantom partner award tickets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Virgin Atlantic joined Skyteam in 2023 and has been progressively improving their capability of booking partner award tickets online. They have done a respectful job and as of today the following partners are available:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Delta<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Air France<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>KLM<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Aeromexico<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>ITA Airways<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Garuda Indonesia<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Kenya Airways<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Korean Air<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>MEA<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Saudia<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Xiamen Air<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>And of course, you can always call the Flying Club team to book for other partners, with the exception of China Eastern &#8211; the integration was &#8220;coming soon&#8221; before the Chinese New Year in February, but that news seems to have disappeared into thin air somehow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One main complaint that I&#8217;ve heard from a few friends and readers however, is that Virgin Atlantic&#8217;s partner inventory is full of phantom seats. You see tickets available and go all the way till making payment, only to be presented with the following error message:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"258\" src=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19413\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat-300x155.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The pop-up suggests that the ticket was just snatched up by someone else, except it isn&#8217;t. Those seats keep hanging around in Virgin&#8217;s system and it happens way too often. I was caught up in this puzzle when looking for MEA tickets recently and became very frustrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One thing that eventually helped me was to cross check with Delta, as the latter has much more accurate data. The flight I was looking for was from Paris to Beirut around Christmas &#8211; Virgin claims award availability on <strong>every day<\/strong> in that period, which seems too good to be true.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat-cdg-bey.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"282\" src=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat-cdg-bey.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19414\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat-cdg-bey.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat-cdg-bey-300x106.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat-cdg-bey-768x271.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>And indeed it is. As proved by Delta, there&#8217;s no non-stop redemption available on those days.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat-delta.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"429\" src=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat-delta.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19415\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat-delta.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat-delta-300x161.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/virgin-atlantic-phantom-seat-delta-768x412.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Using this strategy I finally managed to locate and book a flight from Rome to Beirut instead, and I will get to Rome from London on Avios. Let&#8217;s see if I can make my first trip in Lebanon this year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virgin Atlantic joined Skyteam in 2023 and has been progressively improving their capability of booking partner award tickets online. They have done a respectful job and&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-virgin-atlantic"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19408"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19417,"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19408\/revisions\/19417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}