Miles plus money - what's the point?

Hi all,

I am one of those that seems to benefit from the new system. If I travel with work it tends to be premium or upper, but I use my miles for economy flight holidays (I would never spend my own money luxury travel - it may suck but you forget about it instantly the other end!)

Now the dream is a completely free flight, including taxes. With the new system, I can get return flights to Cuba for 20,000 miles +£200 taxes. An absolute bargain but the taxes are a pain. Miles plus money is an option to cover the taxes too.

I would expect this rate to be worse, but even using all 75,000 of my current miles, on the cheapest possible fare in a 4 week period in February, it still leaves an additional £145!

Why would anyone use miles plus money with the new system? Am I missing a trick?

I believe you now get tier points and possibly miles with a miles plus money fare now. With the previous incarnation, you officially didn't.

I don't think M+M is intended for huge redemptions. It's more likely to be used by leisure flyers to exchange the 4,000 miles they got from their last holiday for a modest discount. In that situation it works well as they wouldn't expect to get enough miles for a full redemption.

Perhaps Virgin will follow the BA model and offer better M+M rates in a promotion but until then you are right, its represents poor value.

Yeah what would work well is if you could used your miles to redeem the flight, then, at a worse rate, use miles plus money to pay for the taxes.

So 20,000 miles for the flights, an additional 30,000 (for example) could cover the taxes.

Yeah what would work well is if you could used your miles to redeem the flight, then, at a worse rate, use miles plus money to pay for the taxes.

So 20,000 miles for the flights, an additional 30,000 (for example) could cover the taxes.

but that is basically what they have done and allowed people to use miles to help pay for the airport fees, taxes and the VS surcharges.

I think the rate is 3,000 = £17. Which is a pretty bad rate. (people complain about the 17.5k to get a 'free' CDC is using a G award in UC)

This is not something you could do before and it can be a useful option for some people.

There is definitely a point to it now VS have dropped combi-fares.

We used around 80k miles to reduce the cost of 2 Hong Kong flights to around £240. To use miles for rewards the taxes alone would have been £278 each plus over 100k miles so would have involved purchasing more. M&M was the best and only option to get the cheapest flights.