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Hi all, looking for advice, I have c 250k avios and similar virgin points. I want to go to mauritius in November bus class. Seems no availability on BA and i doubt by virgin points will be good enough to help. Any advice on how to search other airlines who may accept points, reluctant to pay the £7/8k required for a pair of cash tickets. Any advice gratefully received.
For BA, destinations like Mauritius usually need to be booked immediately they come out T-355, to grab the Avios seats. However, seats do sometimes appear. You don’t mention which cabin you’re interested in (assume business due to numbers mentioned) or if you have any 241 or uograde vouchers? Seatspy may be useful to you as you can set up alerts for specific availability. You could try partner availability via Qatar but I’ve never tried it. You could also use part redemption to Doha or Dubai and a separate cash ticket from there. You may have just left it too late.
Normally I would say try getting to DXB or AUH then connecting (QR don’t fly to MRU last time I looked so DOH possibly not an option). But November seems extremely popular for the ME this year and most premium seats seem to have gone.
You could look at NBO or another African airport with a connection. I think reader @Cat did this quite recently – there might be a trip report if you search the forum.
Otherwise as suggested maybe put MRU on hold until you can book at T-355 and find another destination for November.
Thanks for the advice… it is a trip for wedding. I could ask the bride and groom to postpone…I am sure they would understand lol 🙂
You’ll need to be flexible on dates and routes.
VS points opens up SkyTeam including possible AF and KL. VS may still fly there but could be seasonal.
BA opens up OW partners but will also mean a change somewhere.
You really won’t know until you start to do some searches on their respective websites.
If you are wedded to points that really does restrict your options. Cash opens up more options including other airlines.
Depends how wedded you are to Mauritius as a destination.
Avios aren’t much help unfortunately unless you’re booking BA 355 days ahead. You could use them to get to Dubai or somewhere in Africa, then pay cash from there.
QR don’t fly to MRU (and neither do AY, EI or IB).
Skyteam via Virgin may have some options.
AF flies from Paris which is obviously very easy to get to, though I think redemptions with VS points are few and far between on partner routes.
Do you have specific dates? There’s very limited availability on BA to NBO and JED, either of which you could connect from. IIRC, @Cat used Kenya airways from NBO on her last trip. Looking on Skyscanner it’s not exactly a cheap option, though, over £700 pp return in economy.
Avios aren’t much help unfortunately unless you’re booking BA 355 days ahead. You could use them to get to Dubai or somewhere in Africa, then pay cash from there.
Sadly getting to Dubai doesn’t make the onward journey cheaper – still £847 DXB-MRU. Unless the OP can get an Emirates reward, I think cash [premium] economy might be where they end up. Emirates supposedly very good Premium Economy is around £1700 cash depending upon dates.
Thanks all – the advice given has been very useful and got me thinking about how to do this. I am unsure how to book air france for example – I know they are part of sky team so was hoping i maybe able to use the circa 200,000 virgin points I have but I dont know how to do that (cant select Paris as a start point on the virgin site).
I have seen that there is a bus class option via Saudia from Paris so that is a possibility I may go for 🙂You used to have to call Virgin to book AF and KLM award flights, I don’t know if it’s still the case.
AF/KL are online on VS website. A quick look from LHR and I can only see Y with Kenya airways! However, try different starting points in Europe… e.g I found CDG-MRU on AF on 13Nov in J for 83,000 + €550 via NBO
It’s dreadful clunky website – a word of advice, if you see zero availability on a day, it may not be correct, as it only looks for Y in the summary! Scan for the actual date to make sure….. it will kick you out every 6 or so scans and be prepared to go crazy!
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