Yes that's true. What I am suggesting is that it might be better to do the other 3 tickets with points and just buy the 2 seats that are in coach. Here is why.

On the web site the price of 2 roundtrip tickets MCI-SEA is almost $1,000. Ouch,

When priced with a companion ticket (I did it on line again) the price goes down to $633 - a nice savings.

But I also have at least one credit card (I think the Citi Prestige) that pays $200 or $250 on the airline you select for the year.

So taking off $250 would leave a total of about $383 - let's round it up to $400.

I think that would be the best use of miles/money/points/credit card perks for those 2 seats (my step-duaghter and one of her friends - they do not are a whit about sitting in First, they want to be as far away from us as possible).

I have an AMEX Plat card and I think the airline for the year is either SouthWest or America; you are supposed to pick in January and I forgot so it was whatever it was last year. I will ask if I may change it, but I don't think they will.

And I believe I have one more CC that refunds purchases on one airline that you choose every year. Need to check that.

I wonder can you stack these? Could I get something back from TWO airlines? Don't know.

So that leave me with 3 round trip tickets to obtain, hopefully in First Class and with points.

On the return leg I see 3 FC seats for 25K miles.
On the outgoing leg I see 1 FC seat for 25K miles.

So I want to spend 100K miles for those 4 legs.

Now I need two legs, preferably in FC. So how many points do I have?

Bryan Alaska 87,234
Wife Alaska 84,227

Bryan SPG 18,000
Bryan VA 1,000

And there is a bonus to buy miles going on right now.

So I will for sure transfer 13K SPG points Virgin America points into my account which would top that account off at 100K, enough to buy the 4 first class seats (well not buy but get for points) leaving us with

Bryan Alaska 100K
Wife Alaska 84K
Bryan SPG 5K

So now all I need are two more seats on the outbound flights.

The possibilities are:

Seats Mis
2 FC 0 REG 120K (2 X 60K)
1 FC 1 REG 85K (1 X 60K + 1 X 25K)
0 FC 2 REG 50K (2 X 25K)

We *almost* have enough miles for that middle option. My wife has 84K in her account. So we just transfer some more from SPG (this time to her account - if they let me) or worst case scenario we buys enough to get us over the 85K threshold. I want to see how much it would cost to 35K miles. With the special bonus on now it might be worth it.

OK that was way way too long, but it helped me to sort out the best use of money and miles and so on.

Any obvious flaws in this?

Bryan