London to Las Vegas with air miles

Sorry for the large number of questions, I'm just unsure on a few things.

We are looking to book 2 flights from London to Las Vegas. I’d really like to go at least one direction upper class.


I think it would probably be best to separate it into two legs, please correct me if i am wrong.
We are looking at dates next October that have yet to be released. Going out on a thursday returning a week saturday, avoiding UK school holidays.


Outbound
London to LAX
Miles Upper class
100 000 miles + £754.72 (for both of us)

Then use Virgin America LAX - LAS about $150 + cost of luggage (not sure how much we will take yet)

Can we book both legs of this together if we call Virgin directly? If we did so would our luggage go directly to LAS or would we have to go through customs and immigration, collect our luggage and recheck in. If that’s the case we’d switch from Virgin America to someone else as it only gives us 2hours 25mins between flights. We would look to give ourselves about 4 hours.


Inbound
Booked as a single LAS to London
Miles + money Economy
42500 miles + $269.20 +1.5% fee
(About £175 for the two of us).

Would i be able to upgrade this leg with more miles if seats in premium became available?
Would this ticket give me the option of bidding to upgrade?
(it’s not a necessity but would be nice to have the option)

I have a companion ticket, and an upgrade ticket available, but from what i can tell the are worthless.

No matter how you are ticketed - a thru one or two separate ones - when you arrive at LAX you will clear both US immigration and customs there so you are wise to allow quite a bit of time to do that.

You can 'upgrade' a M+M economy to PE but only for cash (i.e. the fare difference plus additional surcharges etc plus the difference in M+M miles - 5/5k each). You can't use just miles to upgrade.

See 4.3.2.a

Hi Sasha, welcome to v-flyer.. no worries about all the questions, a shared knowledge base is what brings us all together

Yes VS can book your full itinerary and as you will be on one PNR there is nothing to prevent you checking your bags all the way through to LAS. If on one PNR and you miss the first VX connection VS will be responsible for getting you on another flight to LAS.

When transiting international to domestic in the US you will need to collect your luggage, take it through customs and then put it back into the system again - it is usually clearly signposted but I have never transited with checked baggage through LAX before so someone else should be able to give you direction there.

Yes you will be able to upgrade with more miles and money to the premium cabins if availability opens up.

I'm afraid not, bidding for an upgrade is applicable to the full cash paid fares where miles don't come into the equation. I don't think they do upgrade bids for this route anyway - it is always busy.

I wouldn't call them worthless - just the circumstances need to be right

I'd add you can split a PE upgrade reward to be used for 2 single one way upgrades I believe based on others on this board. I have not personally tried. Ie, you should be able to travel back in PE.

Personally I'd fly into LAX, get a car, then drive to LAS, and have a day in Disney on way back (anaheim = cheap hotels) - reason is better reward availability in UC and PE.

There's never a lot of availability for reward seats to lax so once the dates come out I would call vs and book it ASAP.