Can you no longer book ANA last-minute premium cabin awards with Virgin Atlantic points?

One of TPG’s most popular points and miles seats is now apparently harder to book. It appears that the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club no longer has access to last-minute All Nippon Airways business and first class award seats.

Redeeming your Virgin Atlantic points for business and first class flights on Japanese airline ANA has long been one of the best ways to use them. Virgin is a transfer partner of all major credit card programs (except Wells Fargo Rewards), making it easy to earn Virgin points.

Redeeming one-way ANA awards with Virgin points can be done as follows:

• From Hawaii to Japan for 37,500 Virgin points in Business Class or 57,500 points in First Class
• Western USA to Japan for 52,500 Virgin points in Business Class or 72,500 points in First Class
• Eastern USA (and Europe) to Japan for 60,000 Virgin points in Business Class or 85,000 points in First Class

While TPG found available reward redemptions in 2025, there was no last-minute reward availability.

Related: Feels like first class: Fly from LA to Tokyo with ANA The Room Business Class

Does ANA limit the availability of premium cabin awards on Virgin Atlantic?

Availability on ANA through partner airlines has always been very limited, with some award seats released upon schedule release up to 12 months in advance, and usually reliable additional last-minute seat release occurring up to 14 days in advance.

While you’ve never been able to book ANA awards online on Virgin’s Flying Club website, you can book these tickets by phone if you find space. An easy way to check if space is available is through other partner airline programs like United MileagePlus, where you can also book ANA award seats, but at much higher prices than what Flying Club charges.

United’s online platform follows ANA’s usual availability trends, with some premium seats becoming available towards the end of the 2025 schedule.

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There is still some availability for last-minute flights departing within the next 14 days.

Virgin Atlantic typically has the same (or similar) access to United’s ANA award availability. TPG reached out to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club to inquire about booking ANA awards in premium cabins, as seen on United’s website.

Availability returned the same results across the numerous flight searches Flying Club reviewed for us between North America and Japan. While Virgin was able to see and book business and first class seats for flights departing in 2025, only economy seats were bookable with Virgin points for flights departing within the next 14 days. This is unusual, as award availability for partner airlines is usually at its highest during this 14-day period.

Additionally, business and first class seats are available on the same ANA flights through other partner airlines such as United (where we found availability and asked Flying Club to verify).

In any event, the Flying Club had to request the seats from ANA, which leads TPG to believe that ANA is limiting the award availability made available to the Flying Club, rather than Virgin Atlantic preventing members from booking seats on ANA.

TPG has asked the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club for an official comment on this restriction.

“We can confirm that there have been no changes to our ANA availability and premium seats remain part of our offering,” the official said. “We are investigating the issue with our partners and will provide further details in due course.”

Despite several small devaluations of ANA redemption rates through the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club program over the past 18 months, the rates may still be too low to be sustainable. This may have resulted in an excessive number of ANA seats being bought up by Flying Club members, resulting in ANA deciding to make fewer seats available to Flying Club members than other partner programs.

Hopefully this is a temporary issue and TPG will keep you updated as the situation develops.

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