Update 8/15/24: On 8/13/24, I (Tim) was able to successfully complete an Air France booking using Virgin points. The website gave me an error and a booking reference, but I was then able to complete it over the phone…despite a recorded message in the phone tree telling me that it still wasn’t possible. Yesterday, Virgin told us that the issue has been resolved and it appears that folks are now able to go through the whole booking process online. Let us know in the comments about positive or negative data points.
~~~Original Post Follows~~~
Last month, we reported about booking Air France and KLM flights through Virgin Atlantic by using the airline’s chat feature. Within a couple of days, readers started reporting that they were being told that Virgin Atlantic had a known problem booking Air France and Virgin Atlantic flights and those bookings would be unavailable until July 9th. We received one reader success report around the 9th, but then more recently readers have been told that Air France and KLM bookings would be unavailable until “the start of August” — and Virgin Atlantic has added messaging to its website to reflect the same.
This is a really unfortunate development. The timing of this issue roughly lined up with when Virgin Atlantic devalued Delta awards and added ridiculous surcharges to them (in the realm of $1,000 each way). When some readers were told that there was a “known issue” with Air France and KLM and that bookings would be down until July 9th, I feared that Virgin Atlantic was planning to increase award rates (and perhaps surcharges) on those flights as well.
I had some renewed hope when we got a reader success report from someone who booked on July 9th or July 10th, but then more reports followed of readers being told that awards wouldn’t be available until the “start of August”. That’s clear as mud since it’s anyone’s guess as to whether that means August 1st or early August or how strongly they “expect” this to be the case.
Sadly, there just doesn’t appear to be a way to book Air France or KLM flights through Virgin Atlantic for the time being. Virgin has even pulled the Air France and KLM inventory from its website, so you won’t even see those seats show up in searches now. I certainly hope that this will not precipitate yet another unannounced devaluation.
If and when bookings do come back up, I would strongly suggest verifying availability via phone or chat before transferring points to Virgin Atlantic. Indeed that’s what I had done when I reported my experience booking through chat — since most transfers are instant, I wanted to first verify that they could see the space and put together the booking, then I transferred the points to Virgin Atlantic while the agent was putting everything together.
One final note that might be helpful for anyone looking to book for next summer — I’ve seen a lot of availability via the Air France website for low-priced awards next year. I had previously reported on booking flights to Europe on Air France via Virgin Atlantic. I then proceeded to book the flights home for 8 passengers in business class on the same flight for 50K per passenger (actually a bit less since kids age 2-12 get a 25% discount, so it came out to an average of just under 47K per passenger). I saw 8 seats available from numerous cities over the couple of days I checked next summer. That’s not helpful if you’ve already transferred points to Virgin Atlantic, but if you hadn’t yet transferred it may be worth checking the Air France website if you were looking to book near the end of the schedule.
H/T: Tim in our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group
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