Newbie first point Use

Hi all, looking to fly next April from Man or Lon to Las Vegas to celebrate my daughters 21st and have sufficient miles to now book two return flights. When will the rewards flights be open for a hopefully 8th of April 2016 departure and staying for two weeks.

Also, I have 25k+ Amex Gold miles sitting at the moment any suggestions as to the best programme to put them into (Avios, BA, Iberia, Emirates, Delta, United, AA or IcelandAir), any suggestions greatly appreciated.


Regards

[Neil]

Hi and welcome.

All seats, paid or miles, will become available 11 months from your return date when the flight goes on sale.
There is no certainty however that miles seats will be available straight away, but you need to start checking as soon as the flight goes on sale because they can come and go at any time.
You haven't said what cabin you are looking to fly, but UC and PE miles seats are quite difficult to get on the LAS flights as they are very popular, but it's not impossible.

With regards to your AmEx points, do you need to move them currently? Do you have any use for them in another program at the moment? Unless you need to, I would wait either until you have some plans to use them somewhere or keep looking for some bonus transfer offers which will help boost them.

Neil

You will be able to book the return flight 11 months from the return date. So round about 24th May.
Reward seats may also be available at that time.
I've just done it for MCO but I did have to choose a Sunday return as there weren't any during the week.
In previous years I have bought upgradeable economy and then upgraded on miles as the reward seats came up. This usually happened within a month or two.
Don't know if I was just lucky this year or if the new booking system releases rewards a bit earlier
Best of luck
Dick D

I think Virgin sell tickets up to a year in advance, so its a case of keep checking for reward seat availability... it can & does change daily.

You may (if flexible on dates) want to wait to see if Virgin have some sort of flash sale.

As for your other points - unless they are due to expire, why convert them now? at least sitting on them gives you the flexibility to move them to Avios or Flying miles, etc. as & when needed...

Hi heppy69, welcome. I was a newby not long ago too but I have to say the advice and guidance on this Forum has been awesome. with that advice we have already been UC return to Cape Town and have secured UC out to Florida (LHR - MIA) and PE back (MCO - MAN) in Jan 16.

Coming home we are using our AMEX Reward Vouchers ,sadly the Vouchers cannot be upgraded to UC but the flight isn't so long back here to MAN and PE is pretty good IMO.

We did the sums and decided to go out Via LHR and use miles to upgrade an Econ flight to UC rather than use our AMEX Voucher (Econ up to PE) just so we could return to the LHR CH. Thanks to the advice on the Forum I now realise what a great start to a holiday it is !

cost of that trip? £620 + 42,500 miles. each. UC out , PE back.
Sadly with the demise of LR we have had to book a one way BA shuttle down toLHR but that was really cheap to be fair.

as others have said , once the flights appear - keep checking. Also, so far, I have found the guys at FC really helpful when booking flights - but it does help to have some idea of what you think you are likely to be paying, that way you can ask them to re-check if the deal sounds a bit high.

Good luck!

Thanks Guys, there is a group of 7 going so most lokely all just stay with economy to keep the group together. as for the Amex miles, I don'thave a path or a need to use them at the moment so I will take your advice and just sit on them until needed. Thanks again

Steve