Virgin Atlantic Flying Blue Issues

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club can be a great option for booking Air France/KLM awards. But as of late, folks have been running into a lot of issues trying to book these flights. The problems appear to have reached the high water mark with Virgin Atlantic having pulled (or lost access to) all Air France/KLM award availability from its website. This is all highly unusual, so let's dive into these Virgin Atlantic Flying Blue issues, including how we got here and when we can expect some kind of solution.

UPDATE 8/8/2024: Flying Blue awards are showing back up on Virgin Atlantic's website and the error message at the ToP of the website is no longer there. It looks like the issue has been resolved about one week into August, as Virgin expected. I did a test booking and it ticketed without any issues.

RELATED: Virgin Atlantic Torpedoes Its Award Chart For Delta One Flights

Flying Blue Has Been a Mess

Flying Blue has done a lot of things right over the last couple of years with lots of positive changes for travelers. Whether it was standardizing and lowering business class awards to/from the US or introducing free stopovers on award bookings, Flying Blue was swimming against the stream of devaluations and other “enhancements”.

But earlier this year, we started noticing some problems with the Flying Blue search engine. (Let's be honest, it was always a quirky tool.) Award prices have been all over the place and rarely showing any saver availability. Granted, this summer has been particularly tough for finding award availability to Europe, but Flying Blue was regularly showing award prices that were close to over one million points. Clearly, something was up.

Then, the Flying Blue calendar trick died. Until recently, you could leave the date blank when searching and Flying Blue would show you a monthly calendar with award availability. (The new workaround is to enter the last available date into the date box on your search.)

To add insult to injury, some folks have had difficulty logging into their Flying Blue accounts, whether through Air France or KLM on a desktop (including yours truly).

Flying Blue Problems Cross into Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic has had difficulties with Flying Blue award bookings in the past. The fix back then was to simply call Virgin Atlantic Flying Club and their reps would book the flight for you. (The chat function on Virgin's website is another option.) Virgin Atlantic's reps are the best in the business, so booking these awards was fast and easy.

But with this latest around of Flying Blue issues, Virgin Atlantic's agents have been unable to help! Unfortunately, they cannot get these bookings through with Air France or KLM.

Virgin Atlantic now has a recording on its call center stating that travelers are currently unable to book Air France or KLM flights with their Flying Club points, and that the issue is expected to be resolved in early August.

The airline also shows the following message at the top of the page when you go to the Air France or KLM partner page on Virgin Atlantic's website:

Due to a system issue, customers are currently unable to book Air France/KLM seats with Virgin Points on our website and through the Customer Centre. We’d like to sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused and our teams are working hard to fix this issue. We expect bookings to be available again at the start of August.

With August just a couple of weeks away, let's see how this turns out. Until then, the Air France and KLM websites and apps remain the only viable ways of booking award flights with either airline, with Virgin Atlantic out and Delta's ridiculous pricing making it a non-starter.

Virgin Atlantic Flying Blue Issues: ToP Thoughts

It's unfortunate to see Flying Blue's technological woes culminate in Virgin Atlantic completely losing access to Air France/KLM award availability. Virgin Atlantic and Air France/KLM are both serious and competent airlines, so here's hoping this issue gets sorted out quickly in August. But I am also interested in seeing when things will return to normal on the Air France/KLM side of things with some saver award availability returning and the search engine working (mostly) properly again.

What do you make of these booking issues? Come share your thoughts in our Facebook group!