miles and vouchers - is this correct?

Hi guys,
newbie here. I don't fly often, but I ended up with a VA credit card and I'm trying to figure out how to spend some miles.

I have a wife, 1 infant and 1 child to bring with me.
I have 2 Premium Economy rewards and 1 Companion reward, all coming from the card.

If I book for me and the children in bucket L,R,B or Y, then I should be able to:

upgrade my seat to Premium Economy with 10k miles, and
use the vouchers to align everyone else to Premium Economy, right?

I don't know if it's actually worth it, vs. just paying the cheapest PE fare (it's going to be on either LHR - SFO or LHR - SYD, roundtrip), to be honest. Would be much more convenient to upgrade to Upper, but if I understand correctly, it would require at least 120k miles (60k for me and 60k for the child, plus some more for the infant), is that right?

Hi & welcome!

You're correct about being able to upgrade a Y/B/L fare to PE with 10K miles (for certain destinations, many are actually 12.5K)

However the AMEX vouchers can only be used in conjunction with an economy reward, an economy ticket fully paid with miles.

Thanks
James

[Neil]

Just to add to what James has put, to make use of the companion voucher, the revenue ticket must be booked in a flexible fare code bucket (Y/B/R/L for econ, W/S for PE, J for UC) so even if you booked a full economy reward with miles and used your upgrade voucher to get you in to PE, you wouldn't then be able to use the companion voucher along side it as both your economy and upgrade PE fare will be in the reward fare codes (T & P respectively).

Also, you need to ensure that to use any of the rewards (PE upgrade voucher or companion ticket) there is reward availability in the class you require. Just because there are PE seats available doesn't necessarily mean there will be reward PE seats available. The amount of reward seats are limited on each flight and during the busy holiday periods some flights may even not have any.

Thanks,
Neil

Neil

I don't know if it's actually worth it, vs. just paying the cheapest PE fare (it's going to be on either LHR - SFO or LHR - SYD, roundtrip), to be honest. Would be much more convenient to upgrade to Upper, but if I understand correctly, it would require at least 120k miles (60k for me and 60k for the child, plus some more for the infant), is that right?

Welcome,

Firstly don't get excited about the Companion Voucher, they are noted as being next to useless and generally a marketing enticement for non-business travellers (cheaper to buy lowest fare seats, than 1 flex fare + associated "charges" on the Voucher seat..).
As Neil says, you need to find availablity in reward seats for your intended route first (dummy search for a full reward seat).
Also, where ever possibly ensure your child is using the miles/ reward seat option, as they get no miles awarded for flying on a bought ticket (assumption is they are under 12yrs)

Options on LHR-SYD rewards are as scarce as news on a Virgin Alliance, so again be flexible on dates, and for this route especially don't expect much, if any availability. The SFO route will likely give more options.

best bet maybe;
2 Y miles seats upgraded into PE with your reward vouchers (remember you need to search for spend miles seats in PE only)
Your wife and child on these.
1 bought lowest fare PE, for you (as you'll gain the full miles for the trip)

check availability online, then suggest ring to sort out, as the website past the search stage is embarrassingly clunky.

NH

Thanks guys, I really appreciated your responses!
You made it clear the companion ticket is a no-go, so I'll probably just play around with upgrades (either with miles or vouchers).

Thanks a lot!

Cheers
Giacomo

I'm working on the assumption that without the ability to combine your vouchers, the London to Sydney outright is beyond reach on miles/vouchers, so the following is based on a LHR>SFO round trip.

The companion ticket CAN sometimes be worthwhile for PE. There are occasions where when 1 S fare ticket plus the taxes and charges on the companion work out less that the price of two K fares (the lowest PE fare).

For example, looking at some random dates to SFO next October, 2 adult K fares including taxes would be approximately £2450. One S Fare (£1156) plus the companion and 2 lots of taxes is is £1997 - so nearly £500 less than the 2 K fares, and better flexibility.

If you have a pot of miles as well, you could then buy an outright PE redemption for your infant for 7000 miles (10% of the adult fare). This is based on them being under 2 at the time of the outbound and they do not have their own seat. Taxes on this would be approx £90 I think.

For your child you can then use 50K miles and one PE upgrade voucher. Taxes on this are the same as an adult at around £420.

So that would be a total of approx £2500 and 57K miles for the 4 of you.

You could also look at miles and money if you don't have the 57K miles

And to complicate it a bit further, if you bought an S fare and used a companion voucher, you could then use miles to put the revenue S ticket holder into a UC seat for another 25,000 miles, but the companion cannot be further upgraded.

Then you could buy an infant UC fare (10k miles), and there would be about another £66 fuel surcharge to pay

Then you would end up with one adult and infant travelling in UC, with second adult and child in PE, for 85,000 miles and £2566. Much easier IMHO to look after a lap child in a UC suite on such a long journey, although depends on your attitude to travelling in 2 separate cabins.