Upgrading from sale-price reward fares

If I book a Y reward to NYC for 29.5k miles, is it still 'just' 40k more miles to upgrade to UC? That seems to get me a very good deal on an UC reward. Is there a catch?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Good question and I suspect the only way to find out is to call VS - let us know how you get on (my tip, don't offer up the information that you booked in the miles sale!).

I got told you'd have to upgrade the sales miles to the normal miles, then add the upgrade miles when I asked that here before...

Plus you'd have to pay the extra fuel surcharge and APD as well - £ 151 in total (£86 fuel surcharge and £ 65 APD)

[Neil]

Because you are on a full reward, you will need to 'pay' with miles to the current mileage level required for the cabin you want. So for UC it will be 90 or 100k in total required still.

The upgrade miles amount you are quoting are for upgrading a revenue fare with miles.

Thanks very much for your responses.

Neil, out of interest, is your answer based on experience? What you say makes perfect sense. I am just wondering whether I should experiment and see if it's actually true...

Because you are on a full reward, you will need to 'pay' with miles to the current mileage level required for the cabin you want. So for UC it will be 90 or 100k in total required still.

I can confirm what Neil has said as I tried to upgrade a reward sale ticket and was told exactly that! Scuppered my plans v(

Think I will wait for another reward sale and then upgrade ):

[Neil]

Thanks very much for your responses.

Neil, out of interest, is your answer based on experience? What you say makes perfect sense. I am just wondering whether I should experiment and see if it's actually true...

It is from personal experience, but it is also clearly stated on the VS site. If you want to 'buy' a full mileage reward then you need to pay the current level for that.

It is from personal experience, but it is also clearly stated on the VS site. If you want to 'buy' a full mileage reward then you need to pay the current level for that.

Fair enough -- thanks again for the help.

If it's of any use; the AMEX PE reward upgrade voucher can be used to upgrade discounted Y reward tickets. Did this with a 29.5k Y JFK reward last year. Represents even better value if you can get a 19.5k Y reward seat! And this can be upgraded to UC at the airport; was quoted 12.5k miles one way from PE to UC. No good for us tho; I was on a v cheap revenue PE fare - loads of cash required to get to an upgradeable PE code!

[Neil]

If it's of any use; the AMEX PE reward upgrade voucher can be used to upgrade discounted Y reward tickets. Did this with a 29.5k Y JFK reward last year. Represents even better value if you can get a 19.5k Y reward seat! And this can be upgraded to UC at the airport; was quoted 12.5k miles one way from PE to UC. No good for us tho; I was on a v cheap revenue PE fare - loads of cash required to get to an upgradeable PE code!

Yes, we have also used the AmEx PE voucher with a sale reward fare, worked out a bargain y)

Just to touch on the being able to upgrade at the airport. The T&C's state this is not allowed and I am sure if you tried it at LHR they wouldn't allow it - however at some non UK airports, especially those with outsourced staff who don't know the rules it could be possible. The favourite VF saying of "at the airport - anything is possible" works quite well for this.

Just to touch on the being able to upgrade at the airport. The T&C's state this is not allowed and I am sure if you tried it at LHR they wouldn't allow it - however at some non UK airports, especially those with outsourced staff who don't know the rules it could be possible. The favourite VF saying of "at the airport - anything is possible" works quite well for this.

Good point Neil; we were at JFK. Memory a bit fuzzy but it seemed as if they didn't have the specific data - just that my wife's ticket was a PE Reward. The booking agent at the ticket desk looked up our details to check prices. Perhaps an interesting one to try - after all PE back from the east coast is pretty good so nothing to lose by asking!
All academic as it happened; my feeble 'K' PE was going to break the (my!) bank to get to an upgradeable fare!

I'm currently sitting on 2 PE vouchers but I'm not sure how, or even if, we are going to use them;

The thing is, the only way we can really do UC is with full rewards. Losing 40k or even 29.5k on the econ reward to get to PE makes it really difficult to ever amass enough miles for the full UC reward...

And in terms of bangs for you buck, ('bucks' being miles in this case...), UC rewards tickets could be considered the best value. (Each to their own of course...)