V-Flyer

I have to admit to normally flying the oposition (BA) but have just swapped my AMEX points for 100,000 flying club points.
My wife and I are looking to fly into San Francisco and out of Boston in September time and I was looking for advice on the most cost effective way to do the trip in UCS. Looking at it I can:

Use 40,000 each miles to upgrade from preminm economy
Buy an upper class ticket and use FC points for Companion ticket
Buy an upper class ticket and use miles for a free UCS ticket.

I just want to understand what ticket restrictions there are based around the 3 options.

Sorry for the rambling post but it has been a number of years since I flew upper class and am a bit out of touch on all this.

Thanks in advance

Pete.

Pete,

How did you transfer the miles?

BTW, I think the PE and upgrade Option is probably the way to go. Its cheaper initially and you earn miles/tier points.
Regards
S

Hi there

Welcome to the forum! To answer your questions in my own opinion ...

Use 40,000 each miles to upgrade from preminm economy

A good option! You will have to foot the cost of the PE ticket, but you will earn miles and tier points for those flights, so get some return on your investment.

Buy an upper class ticket and use FC points for Companion ticket

In order to use a companion ticket you will need to buy a J fare, the highest fare class of Upper Class tickets, these are likely to start in excess of £3k, so it is not the most cost effective use, although you do get the limo and the tickets are fully flexible
!

Buy an upper class ticket and use miles for a free UCS ticket

Another good call, you can buy a Z fare - the lowest level of Upper Class ticket (price depending on route, may be around £1800k upwards for SFO) but you earn miles and tier points, and then use miles to buy a flight for the wife. You would have to pay the taxes on her ticket, but that wouldnt be very much.

If it were me, i would do either option one or three. Depends on how much i wanted to spend at that time .. and how much i wanted the miles and tier points for my account. If you are not fussed about the tier points, then upgrading the PE seats would be the cheaper option.

Of course, you will need to call Flying Club to check availibilty on your travel dates as only so many non-revenue seats are allocated per flight, but if you are flexible or booking a fair amount of time in advance then its not normally an issue for two passengers.

Hope this helps?

Thanks for the replies.

I transfered my Amex Mebership rewards points off my AMex Gold over to FC miles. A very easy process on a exchange rate of 1 to 1.

High flyer thanks for the detailed answer.
If I decide to go down option 1 route presumably the PE tickets cannot be the cheapest option shown on the virgin website when you run a ticket search. Do you have to book the fully flexible?

Thanks again

Pete

Pete,

If I remember correctly the lowest class PE can not be upgraded to UC, normally. You will need a Class W or S.
You can see the definitions of classes here :http://www.v-flyer.com/codes.asp?click=12

To be absolutely sure you get an S fare, it's worthwhile calling them. Online can be a bit of a gamble when trying to hunt out the "middle one" (K being lowest, W being highest).

Since they removed the online booking discount, and online booking mileage bonus - I'm pretty sure you don't lose anything by calling up these days anyway... [n]