V-Flyer

Just booked 5 UC reward seats to Tokyo. Used 500k miles, paid £2900 taxes. Still great bargain. Wondering wether would have been better to buy a upgradable tickets and used less miles......anyone know?

Buying an 'M' economy fare and upgrading to a 'G' is often seen as the best way of using miles - in your case it would have cost 250k miles plus the 'M' fares plus the extra fees & taxes for UC, at a guess £4-5k?

But it's all about your personal priorities - if you've got that many miles sitting around you may as well spend them and save yourself a tidy sum that I'm sure you can put to good use elsewhere!

So it would have cost approx £1-2k more in cash? I think you're right, as we have plenty of miles think I'd rather save the cash. We already have 130k miles left over which we are gearing up for a mr and mrs no kids allowed trip to somewhere!

Thanks for the reply

I suppose buying an upgradable fare using 50k each and paying a bit more cash we have enough already....

richardswife28 wrote:So it would have cost approx £1-2k more in cash?

That's purely a guess, I've no idea about Tokyo fares never having been there but for the US an 'M' plus extra UC taxes & fees normally comes in around the £800-900 mark.

Remember the golden rule of V-Flyer - if you've paid a price you're happy with, never look back!

The best value use of miles is the upgrade from PE to Upper
The worst value is the initial reward Economy.
I would always buy an upgradeable Economy and use miles, because I'm struggling to earn miles for 2016. (2015 already sorted.)
I am buying through miles booster.

However if you are miles rich then I think the overall deal is a good one.

Dick D

Thanks for replies. DH travels quite a bit for work so we do seem to accumulate, even in quiet years, approx 200k a year......

i actually just got an M fare to tokyo and the cost plus tax was 1250 so you did well in cash terms the only minor issue being that you wont earn any miles but thats not a bad thing given how many you still have.

Yes looks that way. The problem we have is not getting the miles, it's getting the reward seats for 5, usually only Tokyo, India and NYC have availability.

I'd say that was good use of miles. I've just recently booked 2 M's and upgraded to UC with miles on the same route for a total, including the taxes, of £1231pp, so to do the same for 5 it would have cost you an additional £3k. You did well, it does seem that the NRT route is easy to find reward seats on, and G's especially.

A lot depends on your circumstances. A couple of years ago I wanted to go to SFO in Upper (Do I look like I fly economy? ) but the spondulicks were in short supply so I was pleased to be able to book straight Gs, even though it meant that, apart from a few hotels, flying is the only way I can earn miles and they and tier points would not be awarded. Fast forward to last year when an unexpected trip to Seattle hove into view but the miles pot was depleted to be able only to upgrade from an M to G fare to Vancouver. Again it suited my purpose and I was happy.

So why didn't I do an M to G upgrade on the SFO? Well apart from trying to calculate the additional cost of that which seems to be a mystery wrapped in an enigma, I had lost my Au status since the change in the requalification criteria and I was planning trips to destinations not served by VS and was having to try alternative airlines. Well it's good to see what the opposition is like

The moral of my ramblings is - if it suits you, then book it. If you are not a regular traveller with VS but have enough miles for an Economy flight and are unlikely to fly with VS again, then go for it. It's horses for courses.

As we can only go for a week, I don't think I'd book the trip if we were flying economy, not with two kids anyway. That's the beauty of UC, a city break to Tokyo becomes a reality....

As we have 130k left, I think the M fares to Caribbean with DH will be a good price as there are only two of us to find cash for instead of five.

I'm so reluctant to use miles for UC to east coast USA - the journey isn't long enough to rally warrant them.

richardswife28 wrote:I'm so reluctant to use miles for UC to east coast USA - the journey isn't long enough to rally warrant them.

You only need to have one east coast PE flight behind the pax who reclines for the entire flight, meal and all , and upgrading to UC suddenly seems essential!