advice please - 5 Reward seats on one flight.

all,
i have 240k virgin miles and 60k BMI.
I'm hoping to take the family to Barbados/Grenada or Mauritius with my miles in the summer hols of '08.
I'd like to get 5 economy seats out and PE back in.
I know i'll need to wait to book with the 330 day rule, but has anyone been successful in getting this number of reward seats at this time of year on the same flights?
i'll have the added complication of ensuring the BMI booking tallies as well.

Many thanks in advance
Gary






Edit to title for clarity by mod........ Nick

[preiffer]

Hmm. My two (immediate) observations would be:

5 PE tickets on ANY route may be pushing it.
bmi need to manually process the request with VS when redeeming diamond club mileage. It can take them up to 72 hours to confirm the ticket, by which time availability can go.


(Oh, and welcome to the site [y] )

Gary

Hello and welcome...

In 2004 I managed to get 4 seats using Select vouchers and 1 seat using miles return (in Economy both ways) to Barbados. ISTBC but I think vouchers and miles all come from the same pool of "reward" seats.

Three things to bear in mind;

- we had to be very flexible in terms of dates and take what we were offered;
- given the number of PE seats on the aircraft and the popularity of PE on the Caribbean routes you might need to be flexible in that respect also;
- again ISTBC but if you try at 336 days before the outbound leg you won't be able to book the return leg at that point as it's more that 336 days away (unless you're planning a very short trip).

Good luck !

Paul

Hi There

Its not a great deal of help but 5-6 years ago I managed to book 4 PE returns to MCO. 2 were booked using FC miles and 2 booked using BMI miles, I needed a 5th seat but was told that I had more chance of flying to the moon unless I waited until the last minute when more reward seats may be released. I purchased the 5th seat.

From my experiences since that time, as has previously been said I think you will be pretty lucky getting 5 PE reward seats on one flight, you may stand more chance in Y.

Cheers

Mark

AFAIK there are only 4 PE reward seats released at 336 days.

A quick search for 5 PE reward seats to Barbados for next May (the latest possible) reveals availability on all Tue / Wed / Thu (up to 20th) and also Sun 4th. Coming back seems to be OK on Tue / Wed. I went all the way up to 8 seats and availability was still OK

There were similar results for latter part of April (Tue / Wed / Thu / Sun).

5+ PE reward seats is certainly not uncommon but availability around school holidays could be more limited.

I don't think you'll have too many problems with 5 Y tickets if you get in there early enough. If you are Au then book an outward and return as soon as 330 days is reached - then change the booking later when your actual dates become available. You can do this if you are not Au but you will be charged a change fee. Alternatively book one-way when the outbound becomes available and then the return one-way when your return date is available (but be aware that this constitutes two different bookings).

Can you book one-ways on BMI. probably not but if you can then I suggest you book two or three of the Y outbounds through BMI and all the PE return legs direct with VS.

Phil FM

Originally posted by FamilyMan
5+ PE reward seats is certainly not uncommon but availability around school holidays could be more limited.

I wasn't aware that there would be so much reward availability. Thanks for pointing that out.

Paul

thanks everyone.
looks like i'm in with a chance