Best option for multi city trip

Hi all,
I'm looking at booking a trip in September next year and hoping you kind folks will be able to help with the best options for either using miles or companion voucher to get the best deal.

The plan is to fly from Heathrow on a saturday 12th Sept to LAX.
Then on 2nd October I need a return flight from Las Vegas back to Heathrow
(both flights are for 2 adults)

Would like to fly PE outbound and UC inbound, and trying to work out what's the best option using miles.
I do also have a companion voucher from my VA credit card, but as I'm only a Red member I guess the best I can do is use to upgrade to PE.

So, any help you can give on whether I should just use miles to buy the flights, a combination or miles plus money, companion plus miles etc would be really helpful as I'm useless at this and have been saving miles for years and not used them.

I think between us we have about 180,000 miles.

As a red member, you can only use your companion voucher for the economy cabin. However, you will be able to use your upgrade voucher from Economy to PE.

So for the outbound, you'd spend economy miles and use 1 x voucher to upgrade you both, and for the return, you'd use miles outright for UC. To offset any unnecessary taxes, you'd want this as one booking. You'd need 165,000 miles. I'd imagine it's around £600pp in taxes. How are the miles split between you as this could change what you're able to do?

You should also price 2 x PE return seats and upgrade to UC both ways with 134,800 miles or keep to the original plan and fly PE out and UC back for 67,400 miles. You'd also earn 21,360 miles between the two of you.

Your dates are very specific which might hinder your plans, and UC rewards on the return legs from then West are not the easiest seats to come across.

Not sure if I've helped or given you more things to consider!

PS. Welcome to VFlyer!

Thanks Mikethe3rd
Dates are actually fairly flexible at present, was just giving possible dates as thought that might help a little.

Our miles are split about 60/40 between our accounts so will look at how whether it's simpler to book 2 x PE and use miles to upgrade as we'd prefer UC both ways but are happy to do one leg of each if easier to get but looks like it might actually be harder.

Will keep looking. Thanks for your help.

I was going to post up several options, but on consulting the mileage redemption tables on the VS website I keep struggling with their maths...

For example; standard season upgrade UK to USA - West Coast (Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle)
Y-W: 27,400... W-J: 67,400... Y-J: 101,200

The sum total of the first two should equal the last one... but it doesn't!! 27,400 + 67,400 = 94,800 So its better to upgrade in hops from Y-W and then from W-J than to book Y and then upgrade straight away to J. Utter madness, and I am going to drop them a note to ask for some clarification on what the actual totals are before advising further.

Watch this space

I was going to post up several options, but on consulting the mileage redemption tables on the VS website I keep struggling with their maths...

For example; standard season upgrade UK to USA - West Coast (Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle)
Y-W: 27,400... W-J: 67,400... Y-J: 101,200

The sum total of the first two should equal the last one... but it doesn't!! 27,400 + 67,400 = 94,800 So its better to upgrade in hops from Y-W and then from W-J than to book Y and then upgrade straight away to J. Utter madness, and I am going to drop them a note to ask for some clarification on what the actual totals are before advising further.

Watch this space

I may be entirely mis-remembering here, but I think last time I did Y > W miles upgrade and then wanted to do W > J later down the line, they essentially un-did the Y > W and then did the Y > J. I think they look at the underlying fare to calculate how all of this works, which would make perfect sense as it's the conditions of that fare that you're bound by, not the upgraded cabin.

The fact of the matter is, it's also a little agent dependant. I've had agents (both Gold line and airport) get it fundamentally wrong, and try and tell me a pile of cr*p - which obviously I have corrected them on unless it benefited me. I've even had people try and charge me peak miles upgrades despite being way outside the date ranges. Always a fun one to correct agents on - they don't expect people to be as informed as most V-Flyers are.

Having Economy Delight as your underlying fare is a pretty good way to do these in my opinion as it earns more miles and the same tier points as the lower buckets in Premium and gives you good flexibility to change and upgrade as you see fit albeit for slightly more miles. But the cost saving for a V fare vs H fare plus the additional miles in V is usually a much more economical choice. My friend is doing Premium in a few months, with V as the underlying fare with a miles upgrade to W and the cost of the upgrade was about $50 more cash and circa 6000 miles when you take into account what the underlying fare earns.