This is a post that I didn't think I would post but sadly I think we are getting close to calling it a day with VS.
It is nothing to do with the airline it is more my circumstances at the moment. As some of the more longer established members here will know, my folks live out in Florida and for the past nearly 15 years I have been flying out for visits a couple of times a year. These trips have become less frequent in the last 18 months mainly due to work pressures, stretching ourselves financially to buy the '10 year home' and the rather large increase in price being asked to fly across the pond at peak times.
The future Mrs Willd is a teacher which means that for my sins I am now subjected to a life of paying top dollar to fly in the school holidays. Of course it does not help that my parents decided to retire to an area of the world where every parent who has a child under 10 wants to holiday as well. We don't even have the luxury of Mrs Willd being sneaky and taking time off during term time like a lot of parents do these days (can you imagine the up roar, "Mrs Willd isn't in today because like your parents do with you little uns she has decided to take time off in term time to go on a cheap holiday!").
Additionally we have started to fly BA a bit more. This is partly because Mrs Willd's parents have a place in South West France (I know we are quite fortunate sods really) and therefore we have done a couple of runs down to TLS (where thank god there is no theme park people want to visit and the price is rather more reasonable even in CE) but also because the sheer number of destinations/connections on offer from BA are much larger than VS.
I have a few FC miles stashed away which I had originally earmarked to spend as part of any future honeymoon. More recently though given the price of tickets to MCO (and even MIA) during the holiday times (£2,600 to fly in Y for next easter!) we have been looking at spending the miles.
So the issue is this my dear V-Flyers. We want to spend the miles for a two week stay at Easter in Florida. We have currently 53,000 miles, which have been amassed thanks to the VS credit card (we haven't stepped foot on VS metal since a W reward flight three years ago). Can anyone come up with any clever ideas as to how we can use these?
I have already looked at the normal options. Flying from MAN, flying into MIA (shudder but I will do it), flying into JFK/EWR and flying down (although by the time you factor in the cost of the internal flight you haven't saved anything), flying into NYC On the last VS flight staying in a Howard Johnson and flying down to MCO/TPA/SRQ the next day, mile plus money etc etc.
The other option I had been thinking about was actually transferring the miles to say Hilton to then do an onward transfer across to BA. Having said that I can't get my head around it.
Of course it might well be that we decide we will just fly out on a cheap deal with someone like US or AC via PHL or YYZ and save the miles for now.
Does anyone have any bright ideas? Please don't get me wrong, we are happy to fly VS, we just can't seem to get the miles and finances to work for us. Equally happy to fly any class.
It is nothing to do with the airline it is more my circumstances at the moment. As some of the more longer established members here will know, my folks live out in Florida and for the past nearly 15 years I have been flying out for visits a couple of times a year. These trips have become less frequent in the last 18 months mainly due to work pressures, stretching ourselves financially to buy the '10 year home' and the rather large increase in price being asked to fly across the pond at peak times.
The future Mrs Willd is a teacher which means that for my sins I am now subjected to a life of paying top dollar to fly in the school holidays. Of course it does not help that my parents decided to retire to an area of the world where every parent who has a child under 10 wants to holiday as well. We don't even have the luxury of Mrs Willd being sneaky and taking time off during term time like a lot of parents do these days (can you imagine the up roar, "Mrs Willd isn't in today because like your parents do with you little uns she has decided to take time off in term time to go on a cheap holiday!").
Additionally we have started to fly BA a bit more. This is partly because Mrs Willd's parents have a place in South West France (I know we are quite fortunate sods really) and therefore we have done a couple of runs down to TLS (where thank god there is no theme park people want to visit and the price is rather more reasonable even in CE) but also because the sheer number of destinations/connections on offer from BA are much larger than VS.
I have a few FC miles stashed away which I had originally earmarked to spend as part of any future honeymoon. More recently though given the price of tickets to MCO (and even MIA) during the holiday times (£2,600 to fly in Y for next easter!) we have been looking at spending the miles.
So the issue is this my dear V-Flyers. We want to spend the miles for a two week stay at Easter in Florida. We have currently 53,000 miles, which have been amassed thanks to the VS credit card (we haven't stepped foot on VS metal since a W reward flight three years ago). Can anyone come up with any clever ideas as to how we can use these?
I have already looked at the normal options. Flying from MAN, flying into MIA (shudder but I will do it), flying into JFK/EWR and flying down (although by the time you factor in the cost of the internal flight you haven't saved anything), flying into NYC On the last VS flight staying in a Howard Johnson and flying down to MCO/TPA/SRQ the next day, mile plus money etc etc.
The other option I had been thinking about was actually transferring the miles to say Hilton to then do an onward transfer across to BA. Having said that I can't get my head around it.
Of course it might well be that we decide we will just fly out on a cheap deal with someone like US or AC via PHL or YYZ and save the miles for now.
Does anyone have any bright ideas? Please don't get me wrong, we are happy to fly VS, we just can't seem to get the miles and finances to work for us. Equally happy to fly any class.
