Best way to use Miles for Oct '11 LON-MCO?

Hi,

Planning family trip (3 pax) to Orlando during school half-term in Oct 2011 (15th-29th). Not currently able to see flight availability for return leg.

Based on other's experience, any advice on the most likely way to use my 200k miles? Reward seat, M+M, full-fare plus upgrade? Is there any prayer of securing something Miles-based this far ahead of time? Can't tell whether no availability means sold-out or not-yet-published. I don't usually plan travel so far ahead, so this is new territory for me ii)

Thanks in advance.

Martin

[Neil]

It will come down to what rewards are available, and how flexible you can be with your dates. With it being half term I imagine the amount of straight rewards will be very low, if any at all, but do look at MIA as an option. We flew out during half term week this year and back mid November and the number of rewards were very low.

I am currently looking at doing something similar for 2 of us in late Sept/early Oct and the reward availability is very poor (ex MAN/LGW and LHR to MIA), mainly on the inbound leg. In fact I can't find any date that has 2 reward seats on a return flight.

There are PE MPM tickets, which are offering a £250 saving, so that might be the best option for you to look at.

Happy hunting and I hope you manage to get something, but I would advise that if there are certain dates you need to be flying then it could be advisable to book early with money to avoid disappointment. The flights this year both before, during and after half term were rammed full.

Neil

With that many miles, you ought, all things being equal, to be able to upgrade a revenue econ ticket to upper class. However, you might want to consider saving that one for one of the longer flights, thus getting more from your miles - so to speak.However, as Neil stated, reward seats are like rocking horse pooh that time of year.

Neil's suggestion, as always, is excellent, but I'd also encourage you to look at using some to attempt an econ ticket upgrade to PE. I have manajged this with 2 adults plus a child a number of times on LGW-MCO, trick is persistence and knowing when to bug out and simply buy the tickets.

So, take the date you want to return on, stick it in Excel in cell a1and put the formula "=a1-336" in cell a2. This will give you the earliest date on which you can possibly see availability on that route as that's when VS release the flights.

From that point on, you need to call up every day and check, and check again. Worst thing is, they can and will change the number of seats available in various classes at seemingly random intervals, so you need to keep checking.

I was faced with this precise dilemma a number of times, and found getting L econ tickets and upgrading using 20k miles per person to PE a great compremise and do-able.

Hope that helps.

Reward fare to JFK and then catch JetBlue direct to MCO from there - have done that and it is very easy and painless.

[Neil]

Neil's suggestion, as always, is excellent, but I'd also encourage you to look at using some to attempt an econ ticket upgrade to PE. I have managed this with 2 adults plus a child a number of times on LGW-MCO, trick is persistence and knowing when to bug out and simply buy the tickets..

The thing I have found with what you are suggesting, is that an L fare code economy ticket, and then the additional taxes on top, works out at very little saving over a K fare PE ticket anyway. A MPM ticket worked quite a bit cheaper than the L upgraded to PE, and the miles spent is a lot more than what we wouldn't earn on an MPM ticket.

Thanks for the idea of routing via JFK. Good reward seat availability and 3 x PE comes to 202k miles which just perfectly empties my account. Can also off-load some UA miles with an upgrade down to MCO. Incidentally, UA came-up cheaper than JetBlue on that segment.