Combining miles for reward flights

It has been a long time since I have had to do this but I want to buy 2 reward seats to LAS at a cost of 50,000 each. My wife has48,000 odd miles and I have 36,000 odd. I thought that you used to be able to combine them and buy the remaining in one transaction to make up the difference. I spoke to CS just now and it seems as though we both have to have 50,000 miles in our respective accounts, so I will have to make 2 transactions to get 50,000 in each. Is this correct?

Yes in your case you are both short so will need to 'top' up miles. There is a buy miles sale on at the moment so if you need to buy miles then do it quickly.

You wife could buy 30k miles to give her 78k then use 75k plus 25k of yours to get the 100k you need. Thats the only way VS will combine miles from accounts - they won't take your 36k miles and your wifes 48k to give 84k and then you buy 16k miles to get 100k.

You would need to give VS permission for your wife to access your miles to do this (or vice versa)

Ah thank you for that. The rep didn't explain it that way.

If you having to buy miles to make this happen, are you happy it's value for money, you'll still have the tax to pay and all those miles will only offset the base fare...
With balances of 50k you have other options of upgrading, may be not this trip but a worthy cache towards a substantial upgrade in the future ( 60k to upgrade to UC from a qualifying Economy fare for example, 20k each for PE)
I'd be tempted to dummy book and look at fare breakdown on economy seat, as the base fare is what your miles are buying...
NH

Don't forget the need for availability in the respective reward fare class too. LAS is a route that tends to have varying availabity (in all cabins) with reward seats.
DL

Northernhenry,
Sorry I didn't mention that I need the miles to make the reward booking because we have 2 upgrade vouchers to PE via Amex, otherwise I think I would do as you said and hold off using them purely for this reason.
I haven't flown VS for a few years now preferring to use AA for our Vegas trips, but got tempted to try BA, and have just got a lashing over on flyertalk because I dared to complain about the Club World cabin and seat. They all thought I was a VS troll ii)
Dragonlady,
Yes I know how difficult that LAS route can be to get any availability. I managed to snaffle enough points for 2 Upper seats a while back and we had to give the agent a 4 month window of any dates as long as there was 8 days between the outbound and return, we ended up having to go via SFO, which was no bad thing. y)
tontybear
I have had a look and to buy 30K would cost £450, to just buy 2 separate amounts to top up both of the accounts would cost just over £100, so that is the route I am going to go, thanks for the suggestion though