Which flight option would you take?

Flying to Orlando in January and New York in November 2010. Unsure about anything inbetween as of yet.

I am a member of both Virgin and BA FF programmes.
With Virgin, I have around 31000 miles and no tier points at present.
With BA, I have around 8500 miles and no tier points.

My BA tier point year ends in March so any tier points I earn between now and then will be lost as I've no definite plans to fly a few times to earn enough to get up to silver or whatever. No idea if you earn any on say the cheapest economy flight or if you need to go flexible or to WT+ for these.
I have no idea when the Virgin tier points start. From the first tier point earning flight?

Wasn't planning on booking for a couple of months yet as I don't know the duration of the trip. Definitely 6th Jan departure and between 10-14 days. This means I won't be taking advantage of the sale fares that are coming in at around 308 for an economy seat.

I was looking at redemption flights and for 25,000 miles, I can get a flight with Virgin for 179 in taxes. I assume no miles are earned but unsure about tier points.
For around 13,000 BA miles, I can upgrade one way to WT+? (should easily be able to get the extra miles in a couple of months what with Tesco, the BA store etc)

With at least 2 flights next year, the NY one hopefully in UC or the BA equivilent, I should be able to gain some extra miles and tier points if I book correctly.
Don't think PE makes a lot of difference flying on the Virgin ex-LGW does it? Not sure about BA.

Are there likely to be any further sales eocompassing Jan 2010 before the end of the year?

So, what are the best options here assuming I would like miles and/or tier points where possible?

[HighFlyer]

Hiya,

To be honest, I wouldnt worry over tier points if you do not think you'll make the next tier. I think you'd end up spending more money to achieve the miles and points than if you looked at price alone.

quote:I can get a flight with Virgin for 179 in taxes. I assume no miles are earned but unsure about tier points.

No miles or tier points are earned on flights booked with miles. 179 isnt a bad price for the flight though.

quote:Don't think PE makes a lot of difference flying on the Virgin ex-LGW does it? Not sure about BA.

I'd say the other way around - flying WT+ on BA wont make much of a difference as the PE product is better in terms of the priority boarding, crockery & cultery, which BA does not have. If you dont think it will make much of a difference on VS I dont think you'd be impressed on BA. It might be better to save the miles for a full reward seat later on.

For New York there are usually sale fares for November so I would wait and see what happens there.

I think the best option would be to get the Orlando flight with your miles and wait and see what happens with New York - depending of course what YOU want to get out of your money and miles.

Thanks,
Sarah