V-Flyer

Looking at booking PE flights to New York for myself and wife,useing miles. Was wondering what would be the best use of my miles, Should I book Economy and use miles to upgrade or book PE and use miles for the whole fare.
Also is it possible for my wife to transfer her miles to my miles ? Thanks.

In my view, best use of miles is to sniff out an M fare in Economy and then upgrade to P fare PE.

It is possible to transfer miles between accounts but it is expensive and usually unnecessary. If you need to use miles in there, just give FC a call, get authorised on her account and spend away Remember though, miles can only be used on complete sectors and it is not a simple case of 5K from one account and 5K from another for a one way upgrade - needs to be the full 10K from one account. |:)

How many miles have you got to play with? 8D

joeyc I have 120,000 wife only had 16,000 .
I had read on here that people had been disappointed with the worth of the miles in comparison to a cash fare so was wondering if there were better ways of doing things before I got to the point of contacting Virgin.
Cheers

Healthy bank of miles, could fly UC if ya wanted.

It all comes down to what you want to spend on the holiday and if you want to earn some miles to keep on travelling or cash out so to speak.

With the Economy M fares you will earn flex eco miles and TP, whereas with straight out reward fares you would earn nothing and still be spending money on the taxes and surcharges - which can make up a large amount of the cost anyway.

Eco - PE is a tricky one, upgradeable economy classes have sometimes been known to be more expensive than the discounted PE in the first place, so you are paying more and sacrificing miles for less of a reason. My advice is to set your dates and then do a search on how much the PE seats are showing at straight cash value.

If i were you though I would be looking at buying an upgradeable Economy ticket and then going into UC for the journey - surely brownie points with the misses and a hell of a way to start and end a vacation.

I do like these kind of mileage puzzles so please do post again if ya need any help 8D

Gives me a headache looking at all the permutations joey,how you do it for fun baffles me lol !

I like a good puzzle plain and simple.

Also knowing how to play the system def has its advantages.

As if it was in doubt anyway I know who I will be turning to before I book my next flight across the pond

I agree with joey that using miles to upgrade an M fare is usually the most efficient way to use miles to upgrade, especially if you want to continue earning miles and TPs. If you just want to blow a stack of miles in one shot and pay as little cash as possible, then a full redemption may be better. Always check miles+money fares too because whilst in my experience they are generally poor value, sometimes some real bargains are reported.

If you tell us dates etc I'm sure we'll be able to help more.

Thanks for all your replies,given me plenty to think about,I certainly now know the only place to come for any questions vIrgin......Cheers all.

Can someone tell me please, what taxes or fees are payable if I upgrade a suitable EC or PE fare to UC using miles? I can see how much I have to pay for a straightforward reward flight, but cant work out what happens with upgrades.

Mysandytoes wrote:Can someone tell me please, what taxes or fees are payable if I upgrade a suitable EC or PE fare to UC using miles? I can see how much I have to pay for a straightforward reward flight, but cant work out what happens with upgrades.

It depends on where you are flying from and to, and whether you are pricing up a one-way or a return -- if you give us some more details, we can give you a precise answer.

You can work it out from the details that the VS site provides when you price up a booking, but it is a bit of a fiddle!

We'd be flying LGW to BGI return and using miles to upgrade each way. I'm glad you said its a bit of a fiddle because I couldnt work it out! Thank you.

So the cost of an upgrade using miles is just the difference in taxes etc between the 2 fares? When I look at fares on the Virgin website it just gives two for each class: lowest and flexable - is there a way to display more options? Thanks.