matthewuk

Hi,

Probably been posted before but......

My girlfriend and I are both UAL Premier members. We do a couple of transatlantic trips a year (buying tix ourselves so cheap economy - 300-500GBP) and I do a reasonable number of UK domestic and Europe Star flights over the year (as well as quite a lot of BA flights) - should be Prem Exec by end of 2001.

I supplement my girlfriend's miles by using her mileage plus visa for business trips.

We should end up with somewhere in the region 60,000 mp a year each (most of my miles are non UAL so no mileage bonuses :-()

Question is........

Given reasonable regular transatantic travel, should we use our miles to buy Biz class outright (80,000 mile saver awards) or should we buy a cheap economy ticket and upgrade at 20,000 miles each way?

DOes one still get miles for upgraded travel - I am aware that if we buy the mileage plus tickets outright we don't get any miles.

Also (quite important) - is there any diffenrece in availability between the two options or is it the same pool of seats - am I likely to have more success one way or the other.

Anyone got any idea on how successful upgrading is? We usually book travel 4 months or more before.......

Finally - is it all worth it? Never flown biz transatlantic so not sure how good it is?

Thanks!!