In what is hoped to be a temporary glitch, Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club program currently cannot access award seats operated by Air France or KLM in any class.
Previously, flights operated by these two SkyTeam partner airlines made excellent use of Virgin Points, with business-class flights for as low as 47,500 miles across the Atlantic charged on Flying Club program flights without eye-watering carrier-imposed surcharges. . Operated by Virgin Atlantic and now Delta Air Lines.
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See when Air France or KLM page On the Flying Club website, a warning banner displays a disclaimer that seats are not available online and through the Flying Club call centre.
Searching for cash flights operated by Air France or KLM on Virgin’s website gives an error, although codeshare flights operated by these airlines are available to book with “VS” flight numbers.
TPG spoke to Flying Club in the hope of getting more information about the cause of the outage, and possibly the expected return of seats on a specific date.
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Virgin Atlantic was able to tell us the same as a disclaimer on the website:
Due to a system issue, customers are currently unable to book Air France/KLM seats with their Virgin Points. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and our teams are working hard to fix this issue. We expect bookings to be available again in early August.
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We hope this ban is temporary and as promised by the Flying Club program, award seats will return in a few weeks. We will keep you updated as and when the bug is resolved.
Fortunately, if you’re looking to book Air France-KLM flights, Flying Blue is a transfer partner with every major credit card rewards program, including American Express Membership Rewards, Built Rewards, Capital One, Chase Ultimate Rewards, CitiThankYou Rewards, and Wells Fargo Rewards. . . Plus, with Flying Blue’s monthly promo rewards deals, you can score economy flights from major US cities to Europe for just 15,000 miles.
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Editorial Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone, not of any bank, credit card issuer, airline, or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.