V-Flyer

Just doing the maths.

If I buy 100,000 miles through miles booster costs £1515. Enough to fly return to Vancouver from UK in UC.

Taxes would be say £600.

The minimum is would cost in cash is £3200 (ish).

So aside from date restrictions, the benefit is reduced cost of ££1100.

Return UC London to vancouver for £2100.....not too bad.

Or am I missing something?

Just had a look at my recent UC booking.

I booked LHR to LAX return UC with non purchased miles and paid £2200 taxes for 3 of us. The same journey cash costs £9k, just priced.

If I had bought the miles it would cost £4500 plus taxes of £2200 so £6700. Still saving £2300?

Can you buy that amount of miles ?,I thought there was a limit in a year.
Regards
Blacky

Blacky1 wrote:Can you buy that amount of miles ?,I thought there was a limit in a year.
Regards
Blacky

There's a 30k purchase limit per year, or at least was when I last looked...

Richardswife - notwithstanding any purchase limits, a couple of points. Firstly bear in mind that you'd be relying on G (miles redemption seat) availability if you did go down this route, so you'd probably needs to be a lot more flexible on dates than you would for a cash fare. Not sure what the YVR route is like for Gs though...

And secondly, there are pretty regular sales of miles which will typically give you 15% more for your money - might be worth holding off for the next one of these if you're not in a rush to book anything.

RC

IIRC the limit has been increased to 50k (or at least it was for a period last year) so you wouldn't be able to buy/receive 100k in one year.

miles purchased through miles booster do not count towards your annual limit Buy/Gift miles

Penny_L wrote:miles purchased through miles booster do not count towards your annual limit Buy/Gift miles

ISTBC, but are we actually talking about the same thing here though - agreed the OP uses the terminology 'miles booster', but £1515 would notionally be the cost of buying miles outright, based on the £15/1000 rate plus £15 admin charge.

Whereas my understanding of 'miles booster' was paying a fee to double or treble your miles earning on a specific flight - so you wouldn't end up with a nice round number like 100k, and I'd hope you got a better price per mile than what you could get from just buying them the 'normal' way...

Also using miles to buy UC G's outright probably - and I could be wrong - is not the best use of miles. Upgrading from a Economy or Premium Economy gives best value in my experience.

I took a reward UC in August 2010, iirc the 100,000 miles were in addition to £260 taxes and fees etc. so was cheaper than getting another seat and upgrading (although not in miles cost as I did use almost all of my miles, now starting to build them up again)

Thanks for the idea of upgrading rather than buying I hadn't considered that. I've just got three UC returns to LAX at Xmas by just buying them with miles outright, I didn't ask about upgrading, but will next time. Already back up to 239k miles so will be booking for 2014

I've got a London to Sydney return in VA premium coming up in August, was thinking could do the miles booster. There are 3 adults flying so treble would be 66 for the reds and 108 for me as I'm silver. I think.

The cost I'm still working out.

Rang VA and the cost to use miles booster is £173 for 10,500 miles.