*** Advice kindly sought • ANA J seats via Virgin points ***

[Simon de Scoob]

Firstly, many thanks for reading this — I do appreciate it.

I was hoping someone might be able to advise? I’m only too aware that ANA seats (J or F) are a little like unicorns, though I was lucky enough to confirm an F seat on the NH LHR-HND route a couple of months ago: I had alerts from seats.aero and award nexus at the time, which I then confirmed against the ANA website: an F seat was indeed available, so I was able to call Virgin Atlantic to book it. Ever since, I have been waiting for an F or J seat to materialise on the same flight for my wife…

Today, a J seat did seemingly become available: the ANA website showed a J seat being available (i.e. no longer “Waitlisted”) and also seats.aero and award nexus also confirmed the same. And yet, when I called Virgin Atlantic to see if they could see the same award seat, they said that they couldn’t. I did HUACA, but this only met with the same response from a Virgin agent: no award space.

Would anyone possibly know why Virgin cannot see what ANA’s own website and two other alert websites seemingly can? I’m just curious about the discrepancy and wonder whether it’s worth waiting a day and calling Virgin again?

Any pointers would be much appreciated.

All the best.

[memesweeper]

Simon de Scoob wrote:

I’m just curious about the discrepancy and wonder whether it’s worth waiting a day and calling Virgin again?

It’s been reported here often that the “link” between one carrier and another’s award availability can be broken. I’ve even had BA agents unable to see award availability showing with partners which is showing online 🤨 It’s definitely the case that Virgin have the same sort of issues sometimes.

I’d be inclined to call every few hours if I was you given the likelihood someone else is going to book that seat with via ANA or another carrier!

[meta]

HUACA a few times. Some agents don’t know how to search for ANA awards.