Best way to use my miles to upgrade Manchester to Orlando?

Hi all

This is my first post, I am so glad I found this forum because I am getting really confused about the various ticket classes and how best to use our miles. We are getting married in September 2013 and would like to fly PE or upper class, although we think due to our budget probably PE is realistic!!!

I have 32000 miles and my OH has 13000 miles, we are also using our Tesco clubcard points to convert into miles. I expect we will have around 60000 by the time we come to purchase our flights. I know if we can make it to 70000 we should be able to buy a PE ticket using miles - is this correct? Then I guess we could pay full price for the other PE ticket (approx £900). Is this the best way to use our miles?

I have played around with the calculator on the Virgin Atlantic site but all the ticket classes come out really expensive for the upgrades, I don't really understand how it works if you choose a ticket class that costs lots, and you use miles + money then does this mean it's more expensive than if you just purchased a cheaper class of ticket and didn't use your miles?

I hope that this makes sense! Can someone explain how it works to me? :0

Thank you

[Neil]

Hi and welcome to the site.

Using miles can seem complicated but it isn't to bad.

You pretty much have the basics covered, either 'buy' a seat with just miles (plus taxes/surcharges etc) and then another one with cash, or buy two upgradable economy fares and upgrade with miles. The latter is my preferred option, but it isn't that easy to get all the info from the VS site so I find it easier to give FC a call. Ask them to price you up an L fare upgrade to PE with miles (L is the cheapest upgradable economy fare), they will give you the total price including all extra taxes etc.

What you might find is that if you book when a sale is on, it is cheaper to use miles for one seat and buy a cheapest bucket PE fare.

I guess ultimately it depends if you want the cheapest way to do it, or have other things you want to consider like earning miles/TP's etc, as you wouldn't earn either on a full miles ticket.

I have probably confused you more, so sorry if that is the case, but as I said earlier, giving VS a call might be the best option to get all the facts/figures.

Just one last thing to remember, whatever you decide there needs to be miles PE seats available for you to use your miles. Just because there are PE seats for sale, doesn't automatically mean you can use miles to buy/upgrade to them. What should work im your favour is your choice of September, which is one of the quietest 3 months for flights to MCO.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.
Neil

Thanks for the reply Neil. Yes we would just like the cheapest way to do it. We don't travel very often and since this is a special trip we really want to upgrade. I just used the calculator on the VA website and the prices for L class were coming out at almost £1000 for economy. I know it is too hard to say what it will be when we choose to book, we are planning on going out there for a month so I guess we will have to wait until 10 months before to get our dates.

Thanks again