Urgent question please - want to book today

Hi

I am planning on booking a flight today, flying UC from LHR - JFK return.

Normally, I buy an economy ticket and then pay to upgrade that to a flexible ticket and then I use miles to upgrade me further to UC. I can not recall how much I usually pay for this upgrade though only that the economy ticket has been around the £400-£500 mark.

I called Virgin today and there are economy tickets going for around £450 but they said in order to upgrade that to a flexible ticket would take me up to £1150 but there are UC flights (cash) going for £1350 so I am thinking that I may as well purchase the UC with cash as at least that way I can save myself 40,000 miles for the sake of £200.

My question is, does anyone have any idea what you could potentially pay for an economy upgrade to Flex ticket as I do not ever recall paying £1150.

If it helps, this is flying 30th Dec.

Thanks
Kelly

Personally I would just go for the UC cash ticket. That is a very good price, especially for over New Year. Think of the extra miles and TPs!

As far as the flexible ticket - it's difficult to say unless she happened to mention which fare bucket that was in? £1,150 does seem very high, given the eligible buckets recently changed (i.e. some of the cheaper ones were now included).
Currently the ITA Matrix is pricing up LHR-JFK on an 'X' class ticket (the lowest upgradeable economy fare) at £698 (I've used Dec 30th - Jan 6th as dummy dates), so depending on which buckets have availability it should be somewhere in that region.

You may well have been quoted for an upgrade to a flexible ticket rather than one in an upgradable bucket, if that's what you asked for. There's a big difference in price. You need to ask them for the price of an economy ticket in the lowest upgradable bucket they have, usually x in economy and h in premium. You will than be free to upgrade the ticket with miles, subject to extra taxes.

I work out the total price to be around £850. That includes your economy X fare and the change in tax to UC.

Unfortunately you'll need a lot more than 40,000 miles with the recent changes too. An upgrade from economy to UC on a return flight to NYC is now 70,000. For 80,000 miles and £453 you could just do a full miles redemption.

If you did want to save some money, you could always do a MPM fare. GBP 1,138.05 + 15,000 miles. You're not supposed to earn mileage or tier points when you do these fares but you always do; you just need to manually claim the missing miles.

Hi all

I am quite confused with all the info given to me by Virgin. Not sure if they quoted me for economy to lowest upgradable or economy to a flex ticket.


I did call back though and yes, I was quoted this time £800'odd pound with 70,000 miles which I do not want to do. MPM is an option but does anyone know what the difference in miles and TP's I would earn via MPM or paying for UC in cash?

You'll earn exactly the same as the cash booking. Again, you're not supposed to earn anything on these fares but always do. I suppose it could stop at any moment but it's worked well for me over the last 5 years.

Thanks everyone! I decided to just pay the full UC cash fare as it is £200 difference and because knowing my luck I would not get the miles and TP's if I booked miles and money ticket.
At least I know now that I will defo remain a Silver for the year once I move up to Silver status with 10 tier points from NYC flight and my Premium Economy to Hong Kong in November, although I am hoping to fly UC on the return leg once reward seats become available.