How Do I Get The Best Deal Using Miles?

Apologies if I'm in the wrong forum or asking a stupid question:

I have around 25,000 miles now and want to take advantage of upgrading my next flight. The wife has the same, but the kids don't have any.

We do like BGI, but I'm guessing that as this is a popular route, there will be less of 'deal' available.

What is the best way to actually search for flights? I know that I have to look for certain ticket 'classes' such as Y, B & L. When I checked the Frequent Flyer site, it suggested that I would need to part with 7,500 miles to upgrade to PE - is this right, as I read somewhere else that it was 20,000.

Would I be better perhaps paying for PE and then using miles to upgrade to UC?

When I've looked at using miles plus money for economy BGI tickets, the deal doens't look quite so good, ofetn just a few pounds less than the normal quoted fare, alhtough I always go for the cheapest...

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as always.

I've been tracking using miles against best available non miles deals ((man to mco) and you have to be careful.

Sometimes using miles can be dearer than the best non miles deals.

So my advice - check all offers before booking.

[Nottingham Nick]

Agree with Steve. Lots of variables and what is best deal one time, may not be the best another date or another route.

Shop around, and explore all the options.

Nick

Best use of miles IMHO is an outright purchase of a G fare.Y to PE miles upgrade (after buying an eligible fare) will cost you 20,000 miles return. Often cheaper to purchase a K fare (if available). Same goes for PE to UC miles upgrade - 40,000 miles return in addition to the S class fare will sometimes cost more than a Z fare.
DL

[Neil]

With your miles, your only real option is to upgrade an eligible econ fare up to PE, for 20k miles round trip. For anything else you don't have enough miles apart from a one way PE-UC upgrade, but a) G's are hard to come by on the LGW/MAN routes and b) with kids in tow it could turn out to be expensive.

If it was me, I would keep saving the miles for now, and try and get a better use out of them. As DL has said, you will probably find a K fare for not much more than a L fare (plus the extra taxes) and I personally think that an econ-UC upgrade for 60k round trip is the best way to use miles, as you still earn miles and TP's for the flight and are basically flying UC for an economy price.

Is the most cost effective way to use miles to use them for a reward flight so you only pay taxes? With 25k the selection of destinations will be limited but there are often sales on starting at 25k for a Y return.

You could always save them up and get a VS credit card each and earn miles by spending on this. You could soon be up to 50k miles for a Y return to most destinations. I am planning to save mine until I go to CPT next year - a web-fare would usually cost about 700 - 800 return in Y but with miles I would only pay the 200 taxes. That has to be a result!

[Neil]

quote:Originally posted by flyerdavid
Is the most cost effective way to use miles to use them for a reward flight so you only pay taxes?


It depends, on certain restricted, cheapo tickets, the actual fare element of a paid for ticket might only be 40/50 and the other 250/300 would be taxes, so in that case using just miles is pretty pointless as you would only save the fare element.

Using miles to get the most at the cheapest cost, is as DL said, usually buying a straight G. When an UC ticket can be over 2k a few hundred in taxes will give you the greatest saving.