Couple of questions re PE reward upgrades

Hope someone here can help... (sorry its a bit complicated!)

I have a couple of PE reward upgrade vouchers on my account from my VA Amex card.

In a few days, reward flights may become available for a trip we are planning in October next year and I want to be ready to grab them if they do (family of 2 adults / 2 children).

I have 73k miles in my account and my wife has 24k in hers.

We are going to need 100k for the 2 PE (upgraded from economy reward) flights.

Obviously if the flights become available I am going to need an additional 3k miles which I planned to buy.

As I see it I have 3 options:

1. My wife gifts her miles to my account and I buy an additional £3k miles to make the 100k needed + buy 2 standard PE seats for the kids.

2. My wife buys 26k miles and we use 50k from each account. This leaves me enough miles to save £400 or so on 2 miles+money PE flights for the kids

3. I buy 27k miles to add to my account for the reward flights + we use my wife's miles for 2 miles+money PE flights for the kids

My rough maths suggests that options 2 or 3 are the most cost effective (depends on the exact prices of non-reward flights when the dates become available) but can anyone see a flaw with any of the above or suggest anything that might use the miles we have in a more efficient way?

How quickly do miles purchases and miles 'gift' transfers go through?

Can I use 50k of miles in my wife's account to 'fund' the second PE upgrade given that the voucher is linked to my account?

Is there any other way to quickly get 3k additional miles other than buying them (i.e. do any of the 'earn miles' methods produce an instant credit of miles to your account)?

Thanks

Matt

Hi Matt,

Providing you are authorised in the FC account for your wife you can use miles from her account and the AMEX upgrade from your account. It's very straight forward.

As for the Mileage, if your reward is going to cost you a total of 100k miles for 2 people then you need at least 50% of the miles needed for the trip in one account and the rest of the miles in the other.

So your 73k needs to be 75k so you would purchase 2k miles
Your wife has 24k and that will need to be 25k so you need to purchase 1k for her account.

VS would then redeem a one way journey from your wifes account (25k) and then would redeem a return + one way from your account (75k) plus the 2 upgrade rewards from your Amex.

The purchase of miles is instant but I would recommend that you speak to VS and hold a ticket while you administrate your FC accounts. Depending on where you are going will also depend on the cost of the Economy ticket (I am using a very basic example of mileage cost) You will still pay the PE Taxes,fees,charges and surcharges. So get VS to confirm the amount of miles actually needed as you may not need to purchase (destination dependant)

The saving on those tickets will be greater than a purchase but are subject to availability. the fare for the kids would be advisable to be purchased as you will need to purchase a further 15k of miles in order to get a miles + money fare for them in PE. That is likely to cost you more than the saving you will receive from the miles and money fare.

I hope that helps!

Alex

You star!

I never realised I could use 25k from one account for 1 leg and the 75k from the other for 3 legs.

Really appreciate the advice - you may well have saved me a couple of hundred pounds in fees gifting miles around.

Thanks

Matt

You star!

I never realised I could use 25k from one account for 1 leg and the 75k from the other for 3 legs.

Really appreciate the advice - you may well have saved me a couple of hundred pounds in fees gifting miles around.

Thanks

Matt

Your wife will need to ring VS and make you an authorised user of her account. Doing that will make the booking smoother as you can then book all 4 legs together in one phone call rather than you calling to book 3 then your wife phoning to book the 4th and possibly finding out there are no seats left!