Help required for finding out upgrade options

I'm looking for some advice and being pointed in the right direction to find out my options.

I've checked rewardseats.com and found that I can fly from London to either SFO or LAX in upper class using 100,000 miles I've collected.Final destination is Las Vegas which has no reward seats on my dates.

I've read a few posts (but cant find them again in the search) where people discussed the option of buying a premium economy seat and then upgrading to UC using miles, so you can still earn miles for the flight.

My query is what are the bucket codes I require to upgrade from PE to UC and where can I check availability?

The fact that I can get a return reward flight for 100k miles does that mean I would be able to book an upgradable PE and use miles to upgrade to UC if there was an upgradable PE seat?

Do I need to use expert flyer? my free trial ran out, so is there another website where I could check bucket code availability for specific flights?

And can you go from an upgradable economy ticket, and upgrade to PE and then UC?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Wow a lot of questions... will do my best to answer some of them.

Fare codes for upgrading from PE to UC - you are looking for an S or a W fare.

If there is reward availability (ie G class in UC) and you can book for 100K miles then yes they are the same fare code as the upgrades from lower cabins.

Nope, expert flyer is good, however I would wager we are better To check out the loads for reward flights, you can do searches on the VS website - log into your flying club account, under the spend miles tab there is an upgrade/companion flights option. The booking tool presented allows you to select the upgradeable fare buckets and have a look at availability.

Yep you can do Eco - UC, I would suggest looking at this first as it is usually the best deal in terms of mile redemption. The fare bucket you are looking for is 'L' - cheapest miles upgrade fare in economy

Next ?? 8D

Thank you for answering all my questions .

I've logged into my VS account and have found the prices for an L class ticket. How do I now find out how much it costs in miles to upgrade to PE or stright to UC?

The miles redemption table is on the site somewhere.... from memory though flights over to west coast US need 12500 miles per cabin bump each way.. ie for eco - UC you will need 25000 each way, Eco - PE 12500 each way, PE - UC 12500 each way.

8D

Ahh found it: http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/fr ... e_2012.jsp

Thank you very much, that has answered everything.

Hope you don't mind me adding to this thread (it seemed logical seeing as the topic was the same). I currently have around 65,000 miles and would like to make good use of them. I've only just got serious about collecting Flying Club Miles but am keen to use them for an upgrade from Economy to Upper. I've read all the guidance about how it has to be from fare codes Y,B,R,L and, using the information provided on this excellent website, I've also found out that L will be the lowest fare to buy to achieve this. The part I'm a bit stuck with is, how do I find G fare codes in Upper that would form the basis of the upgrade to Upper? I've been using the search tool that is in the Cabin Upgrades section of Flying Club but that doesn't allow you to search G fare codes. Is it a case of finding an L fare code on a flight and then calling Customer Services to find out if a G fare code is available also - and if it is redeeming the upgrade or can I do it all myself through the web?

Also, how realistic is that I would be able to get two UC upgrades on the same flight (ie. me and my wife)? My plan is to fly out Premium Economy (day flight so no bed required eg. 2 x 12500) and then fly home Upper (night flight - bed useful 2 x 25000).

Thanks in advance everyone.

[honey lamb]

Hope you don't mind me adding to this thread (it seemed logical seeing as the topic was the same). I currently have around 65,000 miles and would like to make good use of them. I've only just got serious about collecting Flying Club Miles but am keen to use them for an upgrade from Economy to Upper. I've read all the guidance about how it has to be from fare codes Y,B,R,L and, using the information provided on this excellent website, I've also found out that L will be the lowest fare to buy to achieve this. The part I'm a bit stuck with is, how do I find G fare codes in Upper that would form the basis of the upgrade to Upper? I've been using the search tool that is in the Cabin Upgrades section of Flying Club but that doesn't allow you to search G fare codes. Is it a case of finding an L fare code on a flight and then calling Customer Services to find out if a G fare code is available also - and if it is redeeming the upgrade or can I do it all myself through the web?

Also, how realistic is that I would be able to get two UC upgrades on the same flight (ie. me and my wife)? My plan is to fly out Premium Economy (day flight so no bed required eg. 2 x 12500) and then fly home Upper (night flight - bed useful 2 x 25000).

Thanks in advance everyone.

To check G availability do as described above. Log into your account and do a dummy booking using the Spend miles option. That should you the dates on which G fares are available.

With regard to getting two Gs, it depends on the route. It's less likely on the routes ex-LGW as there are only 14 UC seats in the cabin and more likely on ex-LHR ones, especially routes where there are more than one flights

Hi Jonathan and welcome to v-flyer.

As HL suggests reward seats are searchable on the VS site and there is more likelihood of more G fares when flying out of LHR than either LGW or MAN. Repetition over

If you let us know where you are planning on going and when, I am sure that someone can jump in to help you get the most from your miles. 8D

Thanks so much for your quick replies and for the kind offer to help locate some seats if required - it's really appreciated! We're still thinking about where and when to go next year but it's useful to know about LHR being our best chance of securing UC reward seats.

Thanks again

I love this site, its so informative and helpful to those of us who, quite often, need help about the best way to use our precious miles.