V-Flyer

hi there, am new here. weve just booked flights to Orlando in feb (super xcited!) and used some of our miles. My hubbie has enough miles left for upgrade to PE. But obviously he wont do that without me & the kids. Anyone know how much approx to upgrade 1 adult & 2 child (ages 7 & 3 at time of travel) seats to PE just one way as we,ll be returning with my family and will sit with them in Economy. Never upgraded before so thought it might be fun.

Sarah

Have you booked these flights direct with VA?

yeah booked 4 economy seats on Virgin Atlantic website sunday eve.

Welcome to v-flyer .
Are these bookings paid for purely with miles ? Unfortunately if you have "paid " for flights with miles you can only upgrade with miles (not cash).
DL

No, we've done miles plus money 4 the flights.

Sorry to tell you that is one of the worst use of miles. You will have saved very little in money terms but have landed yourself with a non upgradable ticket that does not earn you any miles or Tier Points.
You may get exceptionally lucky o the day and be able to do something but you will end up digging deeply into your pocket.
Just bear this in mind for next time.

Miles plus money is not always a bad use of miles, I did this for a couple of Y tickets to UVF this month and saved about £170 per person off the standard website price. For a trade in of 2 x 2000 miles I felt this was great value.

JCBR wrote:Sorry to tell you that is one of the worst use of miles. You will have saved very little in money terms but have landed yourself with a non upgradable ticket that does not earn you any miles or Tier Points.
You may get exceptionally lucky o the day and be able to do something but you will end up digging deeply into your pocket.
Just bear this in mind for next time.

MPM tickets are upgradable, to either another MPM fare or a revenue fare.

It is easy to say they are a bad use of miles, but for certain pax who maybe aren't regular travellers and are only likely to ever have a low number of miles, they can sometimes offer decent savings. Some family bought MPM last Easter to MCO and saved over £100 each, which for 5 of them proved a very good saving, especially as they probably won't fly long haul for another 3/4 years minimum.

Agree Neil, to a seasoned traveller MPM doesn't offer much - esp. if you're miles whoring and TP accruing ... but to the very occasional traveller who isn't going to be Ag or Au, modest savings can add up.

mattyp wrote:Miles plus money is not always a bad use of miles, I did this for a couple of Y tickets to UVF this month and saved about £170 per person off the standard website price. For a trade in of 2 x 2000 miles I felt this was great value.

I always tend to include the miles you _didn't_ earn when using MPM as a calculation...

I've used M+M twice this year. I saved £50 (equating to 10% of EC ticket price) for a flight to LAS in January using 2,000 miles; I also bought 4 PE tickets to MCO in the January sale (travelling in July) for a grand total of £2,730 + 7,500 miles each; the current advertised price for my dates is £4,700 so a £2K saving from 30,000 miles, seemed a good use of miles to me. y)

Must add that Virgin allowed me to claim miles on the LAS trip but I don't think you're supposed to. Let's hope I can do the same after MCO ):

For me M&M is about the only way I can use my miles. When we were not tied to school holidays we managed to book an UC reward seat which was fabulous but now that we are tied to Easter and August with very little flexibility on dates I have been using my miles to make a saving on our flights.

I could 'bank' all my points and hope that in a decades time we have shaken the offspring loose and could jet around the world on reward flights but that is too far off for me to consider.....

In the meantime we have just booked 2 adults and 2 children, MAN to MCO, PE next Easter for £3k, saving around £500, for the moment it's the best way of spending my miles (as far as I can see!).

Ali

Normyboy wrote:I've used M+M twice this year. I saved £50 (equating to 10% of EC ticket price) for a flight to LAS in January using 2,000 miles; I also bought 4 PE tickets to MCO in the January sale (travelling in July) for a grand total of £2,730 + 7,500 miles each; the current advertised price for my dates is £4,700 so a £2K saving from 30,000 miles, seemed a good use of miles to me. y)

Must add that Virgin allowed me to claim miles on the LAS trip but I don't think you're supposed to. Let's hope I can do the same after MCO ):

Don't forget that the closer to your travel date the more likely it is the cheaper fares have been sold and only the most expensive ones are available so you havn't really saved £2k.

That said M+M fares work for some people but not others and we all want different things from our miles. Some like me are saving for a full UC reward whereas others are happy to use them to buy a cheaper ticket. Both are equally valid uses of our miles.