Is booking last-minute premium cabin ANA awards with Virgin Atlantic points no longer possible?

One of TPG's top points and miles gems has become increasingly difficult to reserve. It appears that the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club no longer offers access to last-minute business and first-class award seats on All Nippon Airways.

Using your Virgin Atlantic points for ANA's business and first-class flights has historically been one of the best redemption options. Virgin is a transfer partner with all major credit card programs, except for Wells Fargo Rewards, which makes earning Virgin points quite accessible.

You can book one-way ANA award redemptions using Virgin points as follows:

• Traveling from Hawaii to Japan costs 37,500 Virgin points in business class or 57,500 points in first class.
• From the Western U.S. to Japan, it requires 52,500 Virgin points in business class or 72,500 points in first class.
• For the Eastern U.S. (and Europe) to Japan, you'll need 60,000 Virgin points in business class or 85,000 points in first class.

Although TPG discovered award redemptions for 2025, there were no last-minute awards available.

Is ANA restricting premium cabin award access for Virgin Atlantic?

ANA's award availability through partner airlines has consistently been quite limited, with some seats released when the schedule opens up to a year in advance, plus a typically reliable release of last-minute seats up to 14 days before departure.

While you can't book ANA awards online via Virgin's Flying Club website, you can secure these tickets by phone if seats are available. A convenient way to check availability is through other partner programs like United MileagePlus, where ANA award seats can also be booked, though often at higher prices than those charged by Flying Club.

United's online system adheres to the usual ANA availability patterns, with some premium seats being accessible toward the latter part of the 2025 schedule.

There is some last-minute flight availability for departures within the next 14 days.

Virgin Atlantic typically has similar access to United's ANA award availability. TPG reached out to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club to ask about booking premium cabin ANA awards, as listed on United's site.

The availability results were consistent across the various flight searches conducted by Flying Club for routes between North America and Japan. While Virgin was able to see and book business and first-class seats for flights scheduled in 2025, only economy seats were available for bookings within the next 14 days using Virgin points. This is unusual, as award availability is generally most plentiful during this 14-day window for partner airlines.

Additionally, premium business and first-class seats are accessible on the same ANA flights through other partner airline programs, such as United, where we discovered availability for Flying Club to verify.

In every instance, Flying Club needed to request seats from ANA, which suggests that ANA might be restricting its award availability to Flying Club rather than Virgin Atlantic preventing its members from booking ANA seats.

TPG reached out to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club for an official statement regarding this limitation.

"We can assure you that there have been no alterations to our ANA availability, and premium seating continues to be a part of our offerings," the representative stated. "We are currently investigating the matter with our partners and will provide further updates soon."

Despite a series of minor devaluations of ANA redemption rates by the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club over the last 18 months, it’s possible that the rates remain too low for long-term sustainability. This situation might have led to an overwhelming number of ANA seats being reserved by Flying Club members, prompting ANA to reduce the availability of seats for Flying Club members compared to other partner programs.

We hope this is just a temporary setback. TPG will provide updates as soon as more information becomes available.