Help wanted redeeming flying club miles for seats!

Hello! I am looking for some advice and help!
My family and I (2 adults 2 little ones) are looking to fly to Joberg on Saturday 14th Dec 2013. The flights should be released today.
We have been saving our flying club miles for years, never having had the chance to use them as we usually book flights through Virgin Holidays - but we have been saving very hard!
We don't want to upgrade particulary, just use miles plus money fares, doing my research I get the feeling that no seats will be released at all because it is a sat in dec? Do you think is will be the case? Should I just give up?! if not when will seats be released? Also do I have to look out for the different seat letter types?!
Thanks x

I see four economy seats available for MPM or miles right now to Jo'burg but on 12 December. There are seats the Saturday before too, so it's not necessarily about the day.

Problem is it is getting into peak season for travel to SA and of course is before Christmas so you must be flexible and keep searching. Then of course your return flights may now be available for a few weeks - and if at all if you want to return within two weeks. This is not unique to VS, you'll find the same on any airline when it gets to peak travel times.

You could take a chance and book the outbound while waiting for the inbound to appear, or wait until your return dates become available and see what's there for the round trip.

Oh and welcome to V-Flyer.

You could take a chance and book the outbound while waiting for the inbound to appear, or wait until your return dates become available and see what's there for the round trip.

I don't think you can book one-way MPM tickets, though?

I don't think you can book one-way MPM tickets, though?

That is a very good point

I've been caught out by that myself on several occasions!

If the OP has enough miles then she could of course nab the outbound flights, but obviously then there is the risk of the returns not appearing, which can leave you in a difficult position because of the penalty for cancelling reward tickets. A bit of a dilemma really...

Thea1973

It just occurred to me that you might end up in a situation where a combi reward is helpful - http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/frequentflyer/spendmiles/rewardflights/combifares.jsp

Not sure whether these are good value, but worth bearing in mind if you can't get reward seats both ways.

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply - we are in fact just going one way as we are the flying back from Mauritius. I phoned up and they said to just keep my eye on the website - dont know how long I can risk waiting for though! They said we can book for just the one way.

Slinky09 - did you look on the Flying Club website or somewhere else? I couldnt see any for the Saturday before?

Thanks again Thea x