Getting Maldives flights with Virgin Atlantic - My Experience

Redeeming points is the eventual end goal, or at least it should be, there’s no bragging rights for being a points billionaire. I recently acquired enough Virgin points for a redemption to the Maldives and back in Premium Economy.

Let me explain the process to you…

Maldives redemptions are some of the most sought after in the UK points market. A combination of a high demand, a destination suited to wealthier folk, and some of the most instagramable islands in the world makes even flying using cash extremely out of reach to most people.

Virgin recently announced a minimum guarantee to how many seats they would release for every flight, these are two in Upper Class, two in Premium, and eight in Economy. As I am traveling with my partner and there are only two seats guaranteed to be released in Premium I needed to act fast.

Seats are released 331 days ahead of departure, the same as revenue seats are too. Speaking to a few reps from Virgin, this process of loading flights is not an automatic process, instead this is done manually by someone at no particular time, so there is no benefit in calling the American call centre at midnight to nab yourself those seats you want.

I will be traveling at what Virgin calls peak season. THIS IS NOT THE SCHOOL HOLIDAYS. Virgin dictates peak season based on relative demand periods. Peak seasons on Virgin are as follows:

Peak season traveling requires a higher amount of points, for the Maldives this is 45,000 for Economy, 85,000 for Premium, and 135,000 for Upper Class. This compares to standard season which requires 25,000 for Economy, 50,000 for Premium, and 115,000 for Upper Class.

Armed with a Virgin companion voucher earned from the Virgin Atlantic Reward+ I needed to redeem 85,000 points for return tickets in Premium for two people.

To use a companion voucher you must book your seats over the phone with Virgin. Whilst seeming slightly archaic in nature, I was never on hold for more than ten minutes trying to get hold of a rep. The voucher is held by Virgin Money until the customer wants to redeem it, at which point Virgin needs to first confirm the customer holds a companion voucher with Virgin Money, and then bring it across, hence the need to book over the phone.

Booking the outbound leg was simple enough, calling Virgin, spending ten minutes on hold, and then getting through to a very knowledgeable rep who took me through the process. I called 331 days prior to the outbound leg, meaning my inbound flights weren’t released yet. The rep placed my desired seats on hold for me until when my return flights were released at which point they could join up the bookings and create one unified booking.

Getting the inbound flights is just as competitive. I use Seatspy to inform me when seats are available to book with points. I had set an alert for the return in Seatspy, but when these were released Seatspy did not inform me. Seatspy was actually lacking any Virgin flights for this day on any route, so clearly something in the background did not happen as it was meant to. Use this as a warning not to exclusively rely on technology… Unfortunately on this day I was also not at the races, having completely forgotten until late afternoon that I was to book the return leg that day. The seats left for the day I desired were eight in Economy, or two in Upper. As there was good availability in Economy I decided to hold off from booking these flights and instead set my sights on the return flight in a couple of days time.

Having failed in spectacular fashion I wasn’t leaving this to chance, setting multiple reminders for the day in question. This day came and went without Virgin having ever uploaded the flights to the system, a quick call to the call centre confirmed this with an equal amount of confusion on their part. The flights were released a day later than they should have been, nonetheless I was ready the next day and called as soon as they were released on the Virgin website to book them. The agent took the seats I had on hold for the outbound leg, married them up to the inbound leg to create a unified booking. Virgin doesn’t require you to use a Virgin Atlantic Rewards card for payment so I used an alternative card for which I am trying to hit the spending requirement on.

Et voila.

Hopefully this story can inform you of the difficulty of getting some of the most in demand seats out there.

Sam