Reward flights (possibly stupid) question.

I'm looking to book 3 reward flights soon - but only have enough for one way. Is it possible to book the outgoing seats with points on release of dates, but wait until the xmas sale to book the returns with money? I've noticed that if you try to book one way flights with money the cost is about 3 times the outgoing portion of a return fare. Would I have the same problem booking return flights even though it would be a sale price.

[Nottingham Nick]

Welcome to V-Flyer.

One way tickets are very expensive, as they are booked in the most expensive bucket. These buckets are not affected by sales.

You haven't said where you are looking to fly, or in what class - both of these factors make a big difference to the chances of getting three miles seats on one flight.

Virgin do a thing called a CombiFare, which essentially allows you to pay for one leg of a reward flight, but it doesn't apply to Upper and is restrictive in other ways - it is explained fully here - http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/gb/en/fl ... fares.html

If you post more details about exactly you are trying to do, then I am sure that you will be offered best advice.


Nick

Thank you Nick. Yes we are after 3 UC, from MAN to MCO ideally. Though we could do London if we had to. We will have 50000 points x 2 and about 27000 (thought we might buy the rest unless it's cheaper and possible to get an upgrade). We can be quite flexible with dates.

[Nottingham Nick]

Ah, that is not good on several fronts - firstly CombiFares don't apply to Upper, so you would have to buy three extortionately expensive one ways in J to get back.

The second problem would be actually getting three reward seats on this route on one flight. It is a long time since I flew to MCO and even though from what I have read Upper reward seats may not be as rare as they used to be - especially from MAN, I think the chances of three being available, on release or shortly after, are very, very slim bordering on impossible- but others may have different views, as it isn't a route I really pay attention to.

Good luck, but I fear you may have to re-think the plan.

Nick

Have a look at flying into ATL then connecting to MCO (on delta which will give you a few tier points / miles back).

having a larger upper section, there's "maybe" more chance of grabbing some upper rewards

David

So what is the point of saving like mad to get miles if it means we have to pay stupid extortionate fares to get home. We go upper as our daughter is disabled and uses a wheelchair so direct flights are a big plus for us and upper makes things a lot easier. There must be some way of utilising the points that won't cost us more than actually buying a discounted return fare!

You can combine an Upper class reward flight with a cash flight in PE or E in a combi fare (just not the cash bit in Upper). You can therefore book a combi flight consisting of one way Upper reward and the other m class E or s class PE and use miles to upgrade this to Upper (it then becomes Upper reward both ways avoiding the problem). You would need 150,000 miles to do this for 2 people if you were upgrading from economy and 125,000 if upgrading from PE on the return.
Your problem however is combi flights are only supposed to be booked as a return so you'd have to wait for the inbound to be released before you booked the outbound, thus risk losing the outbound seats. I would give flying club a call to see if they'd let you book outbound reward seats now and call when inbound are released to make a combi.

Sorry, for some reason I thought you were looking for 2 reward seats. My above calculations are for 2 people. It would be 150,000 for the outbound flights and 75,000 for the inbound if upgrading from E and 37,500 if upgrading from PE.

[Neil]

Why don't you look at booking a M economy fare and upgrading that with miles. For an M round trip upgraded with jokes you are probably looking around £1000pp and it's then 25k miles pp to upgrade to UC or 12.5k miles pp to upgrade to PE, those miles rates are one way so 50k round trip to upgrade to UC.

As others have already said, getting the UC reward seats might be the tricky bit, but it isn't impossible, we lee to MCO in May and I got 4 UC reward fares on the outbound LGW-MCO, but it does tend to be the return leg that is the more difficult but again not impossible.