Practically a yr in the past, Virgin Atlantic nixed its highly effective worth calendar that allowed you to scroll by way of a month’s value of award availability when making an attempt to make use of factors, though a backdoor methodology made it pretty straightforward to nonetheless use. However now, the cheeky British airline is outwardly changing it with one thing way more highly effective.
It is known as the Reward Seat Checker. And whereas Virgin Atlantic says it is nonetheless in beta mode for testing, it is already a possible game-changer. With only a little bit of fine-tuning, you possibly can even zero in on Delta flights bookable by way of Virgin Atlantic … together with the extremely hard-to-find Delta One enterprise class seats for 50,000 factors on flights to or from Europe!
How the Virgin Reward Seat Checker Works
First issues first: Head to the brand new Reward Seat Checker web page on Virgin Atlantic’s web site. Simply choose whether or not you are trying to fly Virgin Atlantic itself or Delta, enter the route, and month you need to journey, and you may simply see if flights are bookable with Virgin Atlantic Flying Membership factors from financial system as much as the airline’s Higher Class suites, together with what number of seats can be found every day.
That is useful if you happen to’re aiming to fly Virgin Atlantic. However, that is pretty straightforward to ebook with factors to start with: Virgin Atlantic tends to launch loads of award availability even for its enterprise class seats to be booked utilizing factors, although you will be on the hook for $700-plus in taxes and costs. Here is a have a look at flights from New York Metropolis (JFK) to London-Heathrow (LHR) for instance.
The place this software will actually shine, although, is whenever you’re attempting to find offers flying Delta…
Utilizing the Reward Seat Checker for Delta Offers
Whether or not you are reserving a fast home journey, heading to Hawaii or Japan in financial system, or making an attempt to attain a lie-flat seat to Europe, you possibly can usually save 1000’s (or lots of of 1000’s) of miles by skipping Delta’s exorbitant SkyMiles charges and reserving with Virgin Atlantic factors as an alternative.
However really discovering these flights by way of Virgin Atlantic is one other matter – particularly Delta One to Europe, which has all however disappeared currently. Except you are getting Thrifty Traveler Premium+ award alerts when these ultra-rare offers pop up, that is what you will seemingly see any time you seek for certainly one of these Delta enterprise class routes abroad on the Virgin website.
That is proper: An enormous, fats error. Except you luck out and seek for a flight that has award availability someday that week, that is what you will get. It may be a irritating trial-and-error course of.
Enter the Reward Seat Checker. On its face, Virgin Atlantic solely means that you can seek for a handful of Delta routes from London-Heathrow (LHR) again to the states. However with somewhat trick, you possibly can dive into any Delta route by manually enhancing the URL to seek for any cities with nonstop Delta service.
So whilst you begin off by trying to find flights from London to Atlanta (ATL)…
You possibly can simply seek for nonstop flights from Detroit (DTW) to Amsterdam (AMS) – which is not at the moment an possibility when beginning your Reward Seat Checker search – by merely altering the origin within the URL bar to DTW and the vacation spot to AMS. Hit enter and voila: A monthlong have a look at all of the Delta seats on this route you possibly can ebook by way of Virgin. Plus, you possibly can simply web page from one month to the subsequent.
To be clear, this does not make reserving a Delta One suite throughout the pond a slam dunk. It nonetheless hinges on Delta releasing the award availability to Virgin Atlantic, and Delta has been extremely stingy with that currently. However at any time when it does occur, this new software makes it far simpler to seek out.
There are a few issues to bear in mind when placing Virgin’s new characteristic to make use of in search of Delta offers:
- You possibly can solely seek for nonstop Delta routes
- Remember to enter airport codes in capital letters – lowercase returns an error
- You will by no means see “Premium” seats for these Delta searches as a result of the airline would not enable Virgin to ebook awards in Delta Premium Choose
However, the worth goes far past simply flights to Europe. You can even use this software to seek for Delta nonstop flights from the mainland to Hawaii, like Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) to Honolulu (HNL). Virgin Atlantic expenses simply 45,000 factors roundtrip in comparison with the 100,000-plus SkyMiles you will have to ebook by way of Delta.
With just some clicks, Virgin’s Reward Seat Checker reveals you precisely which dates are bookable for the flight to Hawaii. Then, you possibly can simply discover flights again to Minnesota by clicking “See departing” to reverse the search.
Sadly, you possibly can’t merely click on by way of to a date and ebook. However utilizing this helpful software as a roadmap, you possibly can zero in on the dates and head again to the primary Virgin Atlantic homepage to copy what you’ve got discovered and search.
Backside Line
Bravo, Virgin Atlantic.
This is without doubt one of the greatest new options we have seen an airline roll out to make it simpler to make use of factors. It immediately makes Virgin Atlantic one of many greatest websites for locating award availability. And by chance, you possibly can even use it to seek out these tough-to-book Delta offers.