amex premium upgrade voucher

Hi Guys,

Just received my amex 2 x premium upgrade vouchers. Does anyone have experience of using them? From what I can gather it's say 25k miles for an econ flight to JFK plus taxes then you get a free upgrade to premium...

Any thoughts/advice would be great.

[Neil]

That is basically correct, although there needs to be PE reward availability (U Class) for you to use them. There doesn't need to be Econ reward availability however.

With the current reward sale meaning Y flights are only 25k, it really is very good value if you can use the upgrade vouchers.

Neil

Have just used mine to do exactly that, as neil said you need availability in PE not Y also you pay PE taxes which if I remember for NYC where about £200 each about £60 more than Y taxes are

I have used the for Barbados, Vegas, New York and Antigua in the past - excellent value in my opinion.

Apologies if this has been asked before: If I were make use of my two Amex PE upgrade vouchers, could I at a later date prior to travel use miles to upgrade to UC, provided of course there is G availability? In other words use 40K miles per person to upgrade from PE to UC for the return flight?

Thanks
James

[Neil]

No you can't, you couldn't even upgrade with cash.

Doing it that way would in theory allow you to book a UC reward for 65k miles, compared to the standard 100k, so it makes no sense for VS to allow it.

Thanks Neil, I thought that may well be the case!

sorry Neil i have to disagree, you can do it. i just checked back and on my Jan LGW-MCO-JFK-LHR trip I booked an econ return suing miles (34750) then got a free upgrade to PE. at both LGW and JFK i used 20000 a time to upgrade to UC.

so my trip cost just under 75000 saving 20000 miles

BTW UC return to NYC is 90k not 100

I'd love to know defnitively, ie. was that just a mistake Flabound in that the staff at the time didn't know the rules - I suspect possibly not though as you secured the upgrade twice, at both LGW (where surely the rules must be well known among staff!) & JFK?

My original thinking, and the reason for asking the question is that surely the "voucher" should be recognised as something that has been "earned" - ie. I am not expecting something for nothing here. Put simply, these vouchers have been achieved through good old fashioned hard spend on a card that VS collaborate on with MBNA/AMEX, so presumably VS have made something out of me along the way. Thus is the voucher is treated in the same way as cash or miles then what Flabound says does, IMHO, make sense

Thanks
James

[Neil]

sorry Neil i have to disagree, you can do it. i just checked back and on my Jan LGW-MCO-JFK-LHR trip I booked an econ return suing miles (34750) then got a free upgrade to PE. at both LGW and JFK i used 20000 a time to upgrade to UC.

so my trip cost just under 75000 saving 20000 miles

BTW UC return to NYC is 90k not 100

Okay, so that goes back to the old "on the day, at the airport, anything is possible" saying we use on here a lot.

If you had tried to do the upgrade in advance of your flight, then it would have been a no, but at the airport, if there are miles seats available then on some occasions it will be possible, just like sometimes they will allow you to upgrade say a K fare code with just miles. That is something not allowed in the rules but for some reason, at certain times on certain flights, the rules go out of the window.

James - it is certainly worth trying on the day, but it isn't allowed in advance. Just like the companion voucher, you can upgrade the paid for ticket, but you can't the companion ticket (with either miles or cash)

Neil

Thanks Neil. The reason I'm looking in detail at 'optimal' means of upgrading is because latter part of next year we're looking to fly out to west coast USA with Steve's parents (as his brother is moving to San D). The pair of us have enough miles no worries to do the usual L->G but not enough to do them as well! Hence all my questions of late about BMI miles, AMEX vouchers...etc !! The number of permutations is mind boggling as we all know

I reckon though what we'll end up doing is using the AMEX vouchers so they have guaranteed PE. They'll be able to come into the lounge wither end with us and, if get lucky "on the day" we may be able to use miles to upgrade to UC.

Thanks
James

As it is our 1st year of having the Amex(BLACK) card and just received our upgrade have searched in the buy miles availablity section of various flight locations and not a lot of availability for when we want to go.

Am I looking in the right place for availablity as for example went through to look for Vegas flights and from March onward nothing, and also very limited to Orlando, any help appreciated. ?|

Orlando rewards are like hens teeth.

Try NYC and then a connection down to Orlando.

[Neil]

LAS and MCO reward availability is not easy to get, and you you really need to be looking as soon as flights are released because they go quick. For MCO look at MIA as an option, and for LAS look at SFO or LAX.

as Neil says you need to shop and be flexible. I just booked 2 MCO-LGW returns with upgrade to PE at the end of Jan and end of Feb. flying weekdays helps.holiday dates are usually closed off. MIA is an alternative however the JFK suggestion is a good one as you can hop on a Jet Blue flight down very easily.