Virgin Atlantic Flying Club - PE Upgrade Question

Hello All,

My Farther in law is 60 in a couple of years and we're planning a trip to the US Flying into Vegas and out from San Fran.

I currently have 20k miles and there will be Me, Wife, Son (will be 4) and Farther in law.

I really want to be able to fly us in PE is it worth me converting Tesco points and anything else I can to get upgrades or maybe miles plus money flights?

Maybe I should just be looking at cheaper flights on other airlines?

Any Help would be great.

thanks

It's hard to give you a concrete answer if you are travelling in a few years' time, but broadly speaking upgrading with miles to PE is not a great use of miles. At the moment a cheap PE return might cost £1100. The cheapest upgradeable economy fare (L class) is around £1000, and you have to pay extra tax to upgrade, which more or less eradicates the saving!

You might want to look at combining a pure reward ticket with cash tickets, or a miles+money booking, as you state. It depends a bit on how many miles you think you will have to play with -- if you can let us know that we might be able to think of some further options for you.

I would suggest the following to give yourself s good chance, but it would take some work.

- you and your wife both getting the black virgin amex when the bonus is 18k, spend 10k each in a year, then you both get 2 economy upgrades to PE. So you would need circa 190000 miles for the 4 of you.
You would need to buy everything on the amex you can, if not the visa that comes with it. You would also need to convert Tesco points and use the virgin e stores for online shopping.
The flights spud cost about 1600 pounds for the 4 of you in PE.

At present you need 7,500 miles per person for a PE miles+money fare so 30,000 for the 4 of you.

I would suggest the following to give yourself s good chance, but it would take some work.

- you and your wife both getting the black virgin amex when the bonus is 18k, spend 10k each in a year, then you both get 2 economy upgrades to PE. So you would need circa 190000 miles for the 4 of you.
You would need to buy everything on the amex you can, if not the visa that comes with it. You would also need to convert Tesco points and use the virgin e stores for online shopping.
The flights spud cost about 1600 pounds for the 4 of you in PE.

On a similar theme

Look at the Amex Plat (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1127063-42-000-avios-amex-plat-sign-up.html) \Amex Gold
threads and if you have the ratings ditch and switch to get sign up and referral MR's
Also go via Quidco to minimise the sign-up costs.

Takes a while but you could each get 60K MR = 60K Virgin

Also consider two of you flying UC with the others in Econ. from LHR not LGW
The two in UC can guest in one person each so lounge access\treatments\fast track and a visit to the bar on board is doable.

On the return swap around (The 4yr old would always fly econ IMHO) !

With so much time I'm sure you could do it ;)

I'm in a similar position, planning a trip to Vegas next year. Tesco are converting £2-50 vouchers into 625 Virgin miles. It takes 12500 V. miles for a 1 way upgrade to PE. This needs 20 x 625 miles = £50 of Tesco vouchers. We usually end up with a couple of hundred in Tesco vouchers by Xmas so I was going to use them for flight upgrades instead of Xmas shopping.Today economy LGW to Vegas is £693 return on expedia so PE would work out as £793 with Tesco voucher exchange.
BTW I hope my maths are correct!
Can anyone confirm that if I bought economy flights on, say, Expedia that I could upgrade to PE via the Virgin site when the miles had 'grown' enough?

I would doubt the expedia fares would be upgradable. You may be better to save for a few years and fly first class, or get the virgin credit card, spend enough and get two upgrades from economy to PE.

Can anyone confirm that if I bought economy flights on, say, Expedia that I could upgrade to PE via the Virgin site when the miles had 'grown' enough?

To upgrade from Y to PE you need to be in L class or above and these can really only be booked directly with VS, and are likely to cost more than you observe.

Best to call VS to discuss options, and of course you do need reward availability for your dates and the longer you leave it on a popular route like LAS, the less likely you are to see them.

I would doubt the expedia fares would be upgradable. You may be better to save for a few years and fly first class, or get the virgin credit card, spend enough and get two upgrades from economy to PE.

Thank you. The more I look into it the less likely it looks:(
I suspect it will come down to either booking PE or traveling economy.
From the VA site it looks like the upgradeable flights cost twice as much as just booking PE to start with. Economy flexible £2050, Economy £695 and Prem Econ £1075-30 or £1013 + 7500 miles (which is £30 of Tesco vouchers for a £62 saving)
I can't see any reason to ever book a flexible fare.

To upgrade from Y to PE you need to be in L class or above and these can really only be booked directly with VS, and are likely to cost more than you observe.

Best to call VS to discuss options, and of course you do need reward availability for your dates and the longer you leave it on a popular route like LAS, the less likely you are to see them.

Thank you. I think your advice is 'spot on'. The next time one of those little chat boxes pops up I'll have a little chat;)

Sometimes virgin offer upgrades at the check in, last time I went from Gatwick it was 179 per person each way, so not bad If avaliable.

I can't see any reason to ever book a flexible fare.

Anyone who thinks their travel plans may need to change - e.g. work, medical, pregnancy - should be booking a flexible fare (or having very good travel insurance in place from the moment they bought their ticket)

There are regular complaints on the VS Favebook page which basically say

"Awful Virgin won't give me a refund just because my plans changed"

Yet many of these people bought the cheapest fare with the most restrictions - the fact that the checked a box that said they had read and understood the T&Cs is neither here nor there to them.

I suspect it will come down to either booking PE or traveling economy.

From the VA site it looks like the upgradeable flights cost twice as much as just booking PE to start with. Economy flexible £2050, Economy £695 and Prem Econ £1075-30 or £1013 + 7500 miles (which is £30 of Tesco vouchers for a £62 saving)

I can't see any reason to ever book a flexible fare.

When you look on the VS web site the fares displayed will be the cheapest and most expensive available, the cheapest fare class will be whatever is on sale that hasn't already sold out, the most expensive will be Y.

The VS main booking engine doesn't give you all the options unfortunately, but you can check on this (http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/frequentflyer/spendmiles/upgradeandcompanionflights/index.jsp) page by entering your dates and selecting the fare class (use L for economy). It doesn't give you the option to select different arrival and departure airports though but does give an indication, for example for dates in October LGW-LAS-LGW that I tried, it shows:

Cheapest economy £693
Economy L £980 (minimum to use miles to upgrade)
Cheapest PE £1,071

So you are pretty on the money, upgrading can often be more expensive since on top of that L fare you'd need the miles, then you'd also have to pay additional UK air passenger duty of £65 (the government classes PE as 'business' for tax purposes).

Welcome to the inane world of airline fare classes. To add to this, there may also be a sale when it comes to your time to book, sales often don't include LAS because of its popularity but often do include SFO, currently there's one on and SFO return in PE is £937.

As another poster alerted, there are often on the day upgrade prices of between £180 and £250 each way, but that's a risk and particularly at busy times of the year they're unlikely to be available.

It's often said that the best use of miles is to upgrade from PE to UC. Going from Y to PE because of the fare class restriction is not the best way to go. As for flexible fares well yes, you wouldn't want to pay them, but I do all the time because I either a) travel with no Saturday night or b) travel at short notice - in both cases you get booked into the most expensive fare class.

Thanks All, Great advice and information.

The way I see it I can either

Spend 30k miles with miles plus money and approx £990 PP = £3960 Total

Or

Spend 70k miles with companion PE flights approx £1400 pp = £2800 Total + Fees for 2 comp flights?


Does that sound about right?