{"id":20998,"date":"2024-10-13T21:02:01","date_gmt":"2024-10-13T20:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/?p=20998"},"modified":"2024-10-13T21:02:01","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T20:02:01","slug":"china-eastern-award-tickets-finally-bookable-with-virgin-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/2024\/10\/13\/china-eastern-award-tickets-finally-bookable-with-virgin-points\/","title":{"rendered":"China Eastern award tickets finally bookable with Virgin points"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Virgin Atlantic joined Skyteam in March 2023, and the integration has progressed rather seamlessly and efficiently since. One exception is China Eastern (MU) &#8211; earning on MU metal wasn&#8217;t possible until November last year, and redeeming was for long like an unreal promise &#8211; we were told it&#8217;s &#8220;coming soon&#8221; in January, right before the Chinese New Year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s a breakthrough finally &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/virgin-china-eastern\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">you can now redeem Virgin points on MU&#8217;s award flights<\/a>. Not online however, and you must call Virgin to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MU&#8217;s award flights were actually showing online for a couple of days, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/2024\/05\/27\/virgin-atlantics-phantom-partner-award-tickets\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Virgin Atlantic\u2019s phantom partner award tickets\">they were all fake tickets<\/a> and it&#8217;s not possible to book at all. A reader called Virgin recently and managed to book a domestic flight in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The award chart is as follows, which is the same across all Skyteam partners except AF, KL and DL.<\/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\/10\/virgin-atlantic-skyteam-redemption-chart.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"907\" height=\"887\" src=\"http:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/10\/virgin-atlantic-skyteam-redemption-chart.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-20875\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/10\/virgin-atlantic-skyteam-redemption-chart.jpg 907w, https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/10\/virgin-atlantic-skyteam-redemption-chart-300x293.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/10\/virgin-atlantic-skyteam-redemption-chart-768x751.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 907px) 100vw, 907px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The &#8220;First&#8221; column however, is unique to China Eastern. They might be the only Skyteam partner that opens First redemption space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>China Eastern&#8217;s most important hub is Shanghai, but like in the U.S. Chinese airlines operate through many hubs across the country. From Shanghai you can expect to pay the following price for a one-way flight (economy \/ business \/ first):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Beijing 7,000 \/ 15,500<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Urumqi 11,500 \/ 35,000<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Taipei 5,500 \/ 14,500<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hong Kong 7,000 \/ 15,500<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Tokyo 10,000 \/ 21,500<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>London 31,000 \/ 85,000 \/ 123,000<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>China&#8217;s domestic flights have fixed taxes and fees (around \u00a310 per leg). MU&#8217;s surcharge on international flights is generally quite reasonable compared to European airlines. You can find out with <a href=\"https:\/\/uk.ceair.com\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">China Eastern&#8217;s award search on their website<\/a> (no log-in required).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Virgin points are great value when flying short- and medium-haul routes especially in economy. Even if you don&#8217;t plan to visit China, it creates new opportunity to transit to or travel between other Asian countries.<\/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\/10\/china-eastern-first-class.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"554\" height=\"316\" src=\"http:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/10\/china-eastern-first-class.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-20876\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/10\/china-eastern-first-class.jpg 554w, https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/10\/china-eastern-first-class-300x171.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 554px) 100vw, 554px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Paying 123,000 points for a first-class flight isn&#8217;t a bad idea either. China Eastern doesn&#8217;t have an excellent product, but their first-class suite converts to a double bed which is still uncommon nowadays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virgin Atlantic joined Skyteam in March 2023, and the integration has progressed rather seamlessly and efficiently since. One exception is China Eastern (MU) &#8211; earning on&#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":[31,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china-eastern","category-virgin-atlantic"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20998","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=20998"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21009,"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20998\/revisions\/21009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.verylvke.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}