Quickest way to earn miles !

So I am in a bit of a dilemma here

Let me explain the scenario ...

a, I currently have 39145 miles
b, I am sitting in Shanghai with the return section of my economy (flexi) ticket to London which will take 30,000 miles to upgrade to upper class.
c, when I get to London I also need to fly back in 10-14 days, however I will only have 9145 miles + 7150 = 16295
d, this 16295 will be too low for even a upgrade from Premium Economy to Upper Class (London > Shanghai) (which is a minimum of 20,000)

so my diemma is how can I manage to do Shanghai > London (Upper class) and London > Shanghai (Upper class)

What is the easiest way of earning some additional miles.

I do have the Virgin Atlantic credit card which earns 2 miles per £ spent, but am not sut sure how soon £s spent get turned into miles, I also have an amex gold but again am not sure how quick the £s spent turn into miles ...

any advice, apart from planning ahead next time

gracias

Shak

[Pete]

No hotel mileage to add on from Shanghai?

Mind you, that's probably not going to help, unless you stayed in about 4 locations, since the max is usually 1000 miles per stay rather than per night, and since you're 4K shy of that upgrade, it probably won't cut the mustard.

Not sure about the Virgin CC, but if you had/have an Amex, the transfer from Mileage Rewards to Flying Club is pretty quick. Also worth checking out whether you have any points sitting in a Starwood or Hilton account that could be transfered over (although the exchange rate is poor, it's good for an emergency like this!)

Pete

Actually I think I have the solution!

Follow the advice in the Virgin Casino Thread (especially the bit about using the referral link so V-Flyer earns a little bit from your signup ).

The promotion ends 30th November. The miles will post very quickly - within 10 days I would say. That gives you 10k extra miles, more than what's required.

great idea thanks

went and did as requested, however it recginises that I am in Chin and has put my application on hold as gambling is NOT allowed from here.

have called them up and been informed I need to call them back when I am out of here and they can allow me to re-register etc etc.

I also did enter my flying club number with my username so am hoping this will NOT be messed up when all gets sorted back in the UK.

can anyone advise how long it took for the 10,000 miles to show in their a/c ?

Shak

Originally posted by Shak

can anyone advise how long it took for the 10,000 miles to show in their a/c ?

I think it is discussed in the thread - in my case I signed up on 1 Nov and the miles had arrived when I checked my account on 10 Nov. They could have possibly arrived before then, but I can't be sure because I was mostly internet-less while out of the country recently .

I found that any account I had tried to register but failed due to being out of the UK caused significant problems.

Once a credit card, email address or phone number has been registered with a 'failed' application it seems to be unusable for any other registration.

I tried calling to ask them to remove all my details but even after that my usual email address wasn't accepted

When you get back to London book a Flight back to PVG in, say, Y. That will mean you have about 16000 miles to come to your account, but not until you have flown of course. So post flight you would have about 32000 miles. Ring up FC before you fly. Point out you want to do an upgrade but that you do not have the full miles. However also point out that your will be upgrading a revenue flight that will deliver the miles. They may well let you go overdrawn for a while. I have done this fairly regularly.

However you still need to find 30000 odd miles to do a full J upgrade.

Of course you could buy a PE ticket - this will bag you more miles to come. It will also mean that you only need 40000 miles in total to get to the front of the aircraft - which is just about arguable with FC before you fly.

You may find you need to be gold or silver to swing this one with VS - your login doesn't show your status.

When I've had various reservations at the same time with VS, the FC has been pretty flexible about allowing me to go 'overdrawn'. Always worth asking...

thank you very much

some very helpful stuff indeed

shak