Geoggy

Hi there,

I am new to VS and have just done my first flight in PE.

It was OK - nothing special (in fact food was a bit rubbish and don't get me started on how rubbish the vroom at Gatwick is).

Anyway I would like to try UC. I have 65k miles from the recent trip and from the VS credit card.

I am confused about the companion seats. My wife has her own Red account and about 10k miles from recent trip plus she has points in other currencies she can transfer into VS.

Is it better to get all of the points transferred to me and book a companion seat, or do we fix it so that we get equal numbers of points and book separately?

On BA this isn't an issue as we are in a household account.

Sorry if this is a dumb question

Nottingham Nick

Welcome to the VS forum.

My own personal opinion is that companion fares are very rarely anything more than a marketing gimmick. I have had lots of them over the years through credit cards and Gold renewals, but have never come close to using one.

There are lots of threads about them if you do a forum search, but basically you have to buy the paid fare in the highest of the fare buckets to qualify for the companion ticket, and usually two tickets in the cheaper buckets work out less money, and both will earn points.

See here for details - http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb...ghts/index.jsp

I am a little surprised about your comments about the VRoom. I have never used it, as I have never used Virgin Holidays due to the cost of their packages, but I have read an awful lot of reviews and comments about it since it opened and the vast majority have been positive.

Again, personal opinion - the best use of points is straight Upper redemptions, but others think booking an upgradable Y or PE fare then using points to upgrade is good value. YMMV.


Nick

Steve Oh

No such thing as dumb questions ^

No need for a household account or anything else silly like that - when you ring to redeem your miles just tell them you want xxx taken from one FC account and xxx from another.

I did this when doing my redemption last year and they had no problem in doing it.

Nottingham Nick

Are you sure that is the case? For many years the system has been that each leg has to be paid from one account, so if two people are travelling - 75% of the points can come from one account and 25% from the other for two return tickets.

You can, of course, transfer miles into another account, but the fees for this are quite hefty.

VS do household accounts, but it is a gold perk.

Nick

Geoggy

thanks both.

my main problem with vroom was canteen style food and the fact that all alcoholic drinks are chargeable.

my wife is a nervous flyer that needs a few drinks to fly, so after eating the very average breakfast i took us off to the No1 lounge with my Amex Plat priority pass.

thanks Steve - will get us to a postion of having roughly the right miles in each of our accounts before calling

Steve Oh

Absolutely 100%
For our upcoming trip my account has a -50,000 showing for 30th July, the date of our flight.
Mrs S' account has no debits at all, because 100% of the miles were taken from my account.

UKtravelbear

But that is not the same thing.

The rules are quite clear. VS will allow the use of miles from more than one account BUT only in terms of miles per sector.

They will not add miles from two accounts and go 'thats ok'. They will only take miles for a sector so if you had 40k and your wife 10k and you needed 12.5k per sector to upgrade (50k in total) you would only have enough miles in your account to upgrade 3 legs.

So Nick is correct.

Steve Oh

Ohhhhh, I see what you mean now
My mistake ^

Geoggy

Well im lost now?

UKtravelbear

Ok I hope this example clears it up

Say you are and good lady have upgradable Economy tickets and want to upgrade to UC. To do so needs 80,000 miles (I'm using LHR to NYC trip as an example) that is 20k miles per sector per person.

Lets say you have 70k miles in your account and she has 10k. Whilst that is 80k in total you still can't upgrade all the sectors because VS will see that there aren't enough miles in her account to upgrade one sector and only enough in yours to upgrade 3.

i.e. they won't just add the miles in both accounts together to get 80.

In this example there must be at least 20k miles in your wifes account i.e. the miles needed to upgrade one person one leg with 60k miles in yours to upgrade the remaining leg for her and both legs for you) OR to have all 80k miles in yours.

(You'd also have to pay some extra � for additional fuel surcharge and APD)


You want to avoid transferring / gifting miles between your FC accounts because that will cost you hard cash and really isn't worth it.

But you mentioned companion flights in UC

That would cost 40k miles (so all in your account) BUT you would need to buy a fully flexible J fare UC ticket. These are the most expensive and it is often much cheaper to buy 2 discounted (but non refundable / non changeable) Z fares in UC than a single J seat. Hence Nick's comment about hm never using his.

As an example I chose random dates in November to fly LHR-NYC and back.

A full J fare would be � 6, 386 (each) but a Z fare would be � 2,505 (so �5,010 for two).

Hope this explains it. If not please just ask

Geoggy

thanks that really helpful.

so i wil forget about companion flights. that isnt going to happen.

I understand the upgrade issue about balance of miles, so now 2 further questions if I may.

1. How does the balance of miles work for an outright seat redemption?

2. If nooking Economy and using miles to upgrade, is there a way of checking availability online for reward seats in UC?

Thanks

UKtravelbear

1. It is the same - you can take miles from multiple accounts but each account must have sufficient miles to but at least one sector. So if you wanted two UC return rewards from LHR-NYC (160k miles) then there would need to be at least 40k miles (i.e. one way for one person) in one account and the rest in the other.

2. Do a dummy booking using the 'spend miles' option (and choosing the UC option for the cabin).

Remember though that you need to be in an upgradable fare bucket to be able to use miles to uprade.

Use this to search for upgradable fares (not the main booking engine). The cheapest Economy bucket that can be upgraded is M

http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb...ghts/index.jsp

Geoggy

Many thanks!

Geoggy

Thanks again - all clear now many thanks!