Some Flying Club questions

Hi folks,

Some Flying Club questions for those of you in the know!

My wife and I have amassed quite a few miles, but never used them. I have over 80000, while my wife has around 70000. Next autumn, we're taking little daughter to Orlando, hopefully on the strength of our miles. I know we need to authorise each other to pool the miles for a single booking...so questions are:

1. When we pool our miles, presumably we can make a booking for three ok?
2. Any idea how many miles we need for LGW / MAN - MCO in October time?
3. Will we be restricted to certain flights?
4. Can we book ex-DUB with VS on a through ticket (thus avoiding APD?)using our miles?

Thanks in advance...

Hi flyingcello,

Some answers for you re questions 2 and 3

The miles you require donot change during a year (unless there is a reward sale on) so at anytime for flights to MCO, you will need 42,500 miles for an economy ticket, 70,000'for a premium economy ticket and 100,000 for an upper ticket.

Rewards seats are restricted by availability. Ie there are not a specific amount available on every flight. Or more simply if there are empty seats on a specific flight it's not a given they will be available for purchase by miles.

With regard to the 1st question, if you can find 3 reward seats on the same flight and you have the correct miles, there will be nothing to stop you "buying" all 3

Spending miles, whilst not exactly difficult, isn't as easy as some companies make it out to be. This isn't particularly an issue with VS but happens with every "airmiles" scheme.

Will leave question 4 for someone else.

Hope you manage to book something that suits

David.

Thanks David, appreciate your help!

Another question...is a Virgin mile equal to a Delta mile? Maybe a silly question

Your miles and anyone else's miles who you are authorized to control can be used to purchase flights so long as I believe one sector is fully purchased from a single account. For instance you can't take 5000 from an account and 35000 from another to pay for a one way upper class between New York and London. I could be wrong or it could be a bit different so just phone up Flying Club to be sure.

My fiancée and I use our miles interchangeably in this fashion. It's much better than some airlines that charge you to transfer them to another person or use them at all for someone other than who is named on the account.

I would say it's not possible to book ex-DUB if you're using miles for reward redemptions. AFAIK you can't even do that directly with VS using cash and would book through an agent such as Expedia for ex-DUB or the Amsterdam trick.

It's easy to authorise each other to use your FC accounts, just phone FC and it's easy done, but don't "pool" your miles as in transfer them as there is a fee for transferring miles. Once you've decided what you want to do - e.g. a full reward redemption or cabin upgrade star planning. It's considered by many that best use of miles is a cabin upgrade from an M class EC fare to UC. However, although they are not impossible to find (and I don't fly this route) UC rewards on this route are apparently like rocking horse poop if you want more than one! But it can be done, I've seen posts, but maybe not all in one go, you might have to book one or two then wait and book another, and maybe only get UC one way. There are others who fly this route and have managed to get those elusive G's who can advise you more.

I think syrome is right - as long as each of you is at least "paying " for one sector (eg the outbound for one person) then that's all ok. As you both have plenty of miles, the combinations are endless. It's only really an issue when one of you don't have enough miles to redeem one sector.

So, for example, I only need 42500 miles to make this all work...not 127500 miles in my own account(for the three of us!)? As long as I have at least 42500, the balance can come from my wife's account?
Also, with a three year old, I don't think an UC upgrade would please the rest of the UC guests! At most PE. But realistically, I'm wanting to use these to keep the cost down..so economy it is. Also, what is the "Amsterdam" trick?

One way in economy to orlando costs 21,250 miles per person per sector/each direction

So total return for 3 of you is 127,500

Any person can only use miles in multiples of the 21,250 amount so:

21,250
42,500
63,750
85,000
106,250
127,500

So if you have over 80,000 can you do the 85,000 and your wife the other 42,500?

Or alternatively you both use 63,750 miles?

Along with £644 in total tax

The Amsterdam trick (also works with other European cities) basicly involves booking a business class or upper class flight from AMS to wherever via LHR.
This can save a lot of cash as VS and BA compete with AF/KL and others for EU longhaul passengers. There is also lower tax flying from Europe.

I did this in April and saved £1000 on an upper class return to JFK

So for this Amsterdam trick...do I actually have to make use of the AMS - LHR leg? I think the Dublin trick is something similar, but as VS don't have a partner from DUB-LHR, I can't go that way. Coming from Belfast, the Amsterdam trick will work if I can join at LHR, but there's not much point flying to AMS to come back to LHR first...and AFAIK, you must now fly all booked legs (for security reasons)...

On a separate question, does anyone know how far 150000 miles goes when converted to Hilton points? I might just buy the flights, and see how far my miles go for hotel nights!

So for this Amsterdam trick...do I actually have to make use of the AMS - LHR leg? I think the Dublin trick is something similar, but as VS don't have a partner from DUB-LHR, I can't go that way. Coming from Belfast, the Amsterdam trick will work if I can join at LHR, but there's not much point flying to AMS to come back to LHR first...and AFAIK, you must now fly all booked legs (for security reasons)...

You must do that leg but a lot of people unfortunately seem to miss the last flight back to AMS ( or elsewhere )

[honey lamb]

So for this Amsterdam trick...do I actually have to make use of the AMS - LHR leg? I think the Dublin trick is something similar, but as VS don't have a partner from DUB-LHR, I can't go that way. Coming from Belfast, the Amsterdam trick will work if I can join at LHR, but there's not much point flying to AMS to come back to LHR first...and AFAIK, you must now fly all booked legs (for security reasons)...

If you don't fly the first leg from AMS, the rest of the flights get cancelled. One V- Flyer did manage to fly by just turning up for the VS leg, but the consensus was that he got lucky. Certainly I'm not willing to test it

They convert to Hilton hhonours at a rate of 2 vs = 3 Hilton

So 150,000 vs equals 225,000 hilton

Thanks for all your help folks...seems my miles might not stretch as far as I thought!!

Thanks for all your help folks...seems my miles might not stretch as far as I thought!!

Have you optimised miles earning in order to top up your account? For example:

Do you both have Virgin Atlantic Credit Cards?

Do you shop through the Flying Club shopping portal?

Do you shop at Tesco and convert Clubcard points to Virgin miles?

Not expecting you to answer (that's your business ) but just ideas to get more miles for your trip.

My only other thought was, will your daughter truly appreciate Orlando at 3 years of age? Might it be better to wait a year or two until she is a bit older and that gives you more time to save more miles?

Have you optimised miles earning in order to top up your account? For example:

Do you both have Virgin Atlantic Credit Cards?

Do you shop through the Flying Club shopping portal?

Do you shop at Tesco and convert Clubcard points to Virgin miles?

And do you already use topcashback, which allows you to transfer up to £50 to clubcard every 12 months, convertible to 12,500 FC miles?