Using FC points to buy upgrade

Getting ready to book the next couple of holidays......

Don't really understand FC upgrades. We have 12500 miles each after our last trip to CUN. We have changed all our outstanding Tesco vouchers up to FC miles and my husband has just opened a Virgin credit card. The idea was that we would maximise our points by paying for the holidays on the card and then paying the card off within the 6 month interest free period.

Now my query is, is it possible to buy economy flights now and then later upgrade to PE with points?

The flights that I am looking at currently don't have a PE upgrade available, I wondered if that's because I'm too early? The flights are LHR - LAX during the school summer holiday next year and LHR - DXB next Christmas.

Sorry should have said, I am looking to book the whole holiday through VH rather than separate flights.

[Nottingham Nick]

In order to upgrade with points you have to book into the more expensive buckets in each class - it is all explained fairly well on the VS website -
http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/fr ... e_2012.jsp

I have never used VH, but my understanding is that they always book you into the cheaper buckets, making it impossible to upgrade VH flights with points.

I stand to be corrected on that, if someone knows a workaround.

Nick

[Neil]

Just to further add to what Nick has said, you cannot use FC miles to upgrade flights booked as a fly drive or package through VH.

[mitchja]

As Nick has already mentioned, you cannot upgrade VS flights booked as part of a VH package using miles. There is no way round this.

You can however, convert multiples of 10,000 FC miles into £50 VH vouchers though, but even then these vouchers cannot be used if other discounts have already been applied to a VH booking.

Just to further add to what Nick has said, you cannot use FC miles to upgrade flights booked as a fly drive or package through VH.

Which is understandable I guess because they are trying to compete with other package holiday companies, which will also by default book you into the cheapest fare buckets available to get you a good headline price.

I can't comment on LAX, but if you're looking at a holiday to DXB, I'd recommend you checking out BestAtTravel - they've come out miles cheaper for us over the past couple of years, and you can specify VS flights. We managed to get a week HB at Atlantis (2 adults, 2 kids) in the may half term week for under 4k...

Rachel, just to say that, in my personal opinion, using VS miles may not always the be the best option at certain times.

I've just booked two seats for March travelling to LGW - LAS.

I wanted to travel PE and the cost of an upgradable B fare code economy ticket was £973.90 + 25000 for a return trip. This ticket would earn 10444 miles though.

However I booked a sale fare for £951.50 which will earn 13.000 miles. This ticket is a K coded fare which means it cannot not be upgraded to UC but chances of an later upgrade on that route are slim anyway!

Obviously this would not suit everyone but for us we've saved some cash, earned miles and still have 'banked' miles to use in the future.

Been into our local VH shop today and enquired about the packages and there are NO PE seats available to LAX at any point during the 6 week summer break! Guy in the shop said its because they are already booked! How can that be? Its eleven months away.

The question is, can I manage in Y for 11.5 hours?

[buns]

Been into our local VH shop today and enquired about the packages and there are NO PE seats available to LAX at any point during the 6 week summer break! Guy in the shop said its because they are already booked! How can that be? Its eleven months away.

Because VH only get an allocation of seats, not the whole inventory available

buns

Yeah, got ya. So I think I'm going to book it all separately.