Help with spending my miles

ok so I have 182k miles to use.

Flying to MCO in May. Can go from Manchester or London.

2 adults and 5 kids. Ideally I want to go PE outbound and UC inbound. Dates are a little flexible based around school holidays. Depart Weds 20th May and return no later than Sat 30th

Price wise without factoring in miles, BA are actually around £800 cheaper overall (flying from LGW).

How would you do it?

Looks like there's good availability in and out of MAN - you could do 20-27 and there's at least one UC G seat available each way. That would allow you to use 50k of your miles to upgrade from an M class economy ticket and save some money.

Actually just checked again, there are three G's available on those dates so you could do three upgrades to UC return for 150k miles. That would save you a ton.

Thanks, the wife has now decided she wants to stick with our original plan of 2 weeks in August (even though the 2 babies couldnt handle the heat this year).

We already have Disney accommodation booked for Aug 14-28th. This can easily be moved although ideally I do not want to move it forwards as the crowd levels were noticeably lower with each passing day.

So I know I can book my flights on August 28th, but when do reward seats become available?

Also, if I buy the "lowest" fare for PE outbound but then a few weeks later it drops again, will VS match it if I complain as the fare I bought was clearly not the lowest as it was labelled?

Thanks, the wife has now decided she wants to stick with our original plan of 2 weeks in August (even though the 2 babies couldnt handle the heat this year).

We already have Disney accommodation booked for Aug 14-28th. This can easily be moved although ideally I do not want to move it forwards as the crowd levels were noticeably lower with each passing day.

So I know I can book my flights on August 28th, but when do reward seats become available?

Also, if I buy the "lowest" fare for PE outbound but then a few weeks later it drops again, will VS match it if I complain as the fare I bought was clearly not the lowest as it was labelled?

I booked my flights out in Feb back in March 11 months before the return date. I was able to upgrade both legs straight away to PE. 5 days later I got the outbound G seats and then since it looked like our Saturday return wasn't going to have any reward seats because they were becoming available all around it we decided to change the day to Sunday and add an extra day to the holiday and about 6 weeks after the outbound upgrade we got the inbound G as well.
It did mean paying for a change of days but in the whole scheme of things it was worth it.

I doubt very much they will do a fare match if prices drop. Once you have bought a lowest fare I think that's pretty much it. The way I look at it is if you are happy with the price then buy them.
I don't think you can book 28th Aug yet though.
Dick D

Flights go on sale for cash at T-336 days but there is no rule for reward seats. Sometimes they'll be available on the day a flight goes on sale, sometimes they won't. They appear at random and could become available at any time, more or less right up until the day before departure. You just have to keep checking but as many V-Flyers will testify, patience and persistence usually pay off.

If you buy a cash fare only for it to drop in the future, no VS won't match it any more than, say, Currys would if you bought a new fridge only for them to cut the price by 20% a month later. That's the gamble. Fares go up and down all the time and there's an old saying that the only thing guaranteed about them is that the person next to you on the plane has paid less than you! (Although not if you're a savvy V-Flyer, obviously!)

It's worth noting, though, that the cheapest fares aren't always available on the day flights go on sale. This is deliberate - airlines know full well there are people who insist on booking on day one (so-called worryworts) so there's good money to be made out of them. It's often worth hanging on a few days.