Pricing question?

OK, I'm getting the holiday bug again and although we got spent out on the wedding last year, I'm making enough money now that I'm thinking of surpising the misses with a holiday to Orlando!

I had a quick look and for 7th Sept to 21 Sept it works out at £439 for econony standard fare. Doing a PE MPM works out at £770 each plus 7500 miles so thats £339 more expensive. It seems a lot considering I could get a full fare PE for only £100 more and save myself 15000 miles.

Any idea how I could get this cheaper? Would it be better to get a economy standard and try and upgrade with miles?

Thx

[mitchja]

Andy

Have you looked at Virgin Hols as you can get some really good PE upgrade deals ie for September on the dates you want,the PE upgrades are currently coming out at an extra £195 per person each way from LGW on top of the basic holiday+economy flight price. You've then also got your 10% Flying Club discount (which I think still applies)

(There does seem some issues with the V Hols online booking system at the moment as the initial price you see for the flight upgrades are higher than the actual price you will end up paying for some reason. Go right through the booking process until the Price Summary page is displayed to get the true flight upgrade costs which should be lower)

Regards

Thx. Would prefer to be able to use some of my miles as I've got 65000 of them doing nothing so if I could bring the cost down of the holiday with them that would be best.

Cost doesn't look too bad though. £1350 each for 14 nights premium with car and plat insurance in Disney All Star Movies. Hmmmmm....

EDIT: Just worked out PE MpM with VA, Disney hotel with Expedia and car direct with Dollar comes out at £1232 each so £118 each cheaper than VH.

But the VH route will earn you approx 13,000 miles each (therefore you will be 20,000 miles better off per person) plus 6 tier points each. (I'm pretty sure MpM does not earn miles or TPs but I'm sure I'll be corrected v quickly if I'm wrong).

The Miami flight is looking pretty empty in September at the moment so if you don't mind a bit of a drive there may be more options in terms of companion/reward tickets on that route than Orlando.

I'd definitely pay £118 extra for 40,000 miles and 12 TPs!

[Scrooge]

That may be the bargin 40k miles of the year, if you only fly once and a while the TP's are worthless, but those miles put you at a point where you could get a free (+taxes) UC flight, or a couple of PE- UC upgrades, worth thinking about.

Right Virgin can get bent now! Just rang up Flying club to request an economy fare to upgrade with miles to PE which comes out at £772 each!!!!! [:0]

If I book a standard fare its £449 each so that means to have the privilege of using my miles it'll cost me an extra £323 each plus 40k miles! Come of it, that is stupid. It would only cost me £100 more than this to book a full fare PE and save 40k miles so what the hell is point collecting flying miles!

I could do a MpM PE for £50 each more and only use 15k miles!

What the hell is the point collecting miles if its like this? I've got 67k miles and if this is how crap the benefits are I'm getting rid of that dam VA Amex!

Not a happy bunny!
[:(!]

EDIT: Gets worse. I just rang to see about a companion reward ticket. If I book 2 economy flights its comes at £898 total and I eary 7500 miles. However, if I book reward economy tickets it costs me £895 + spending 20k miles! Wow, I save £3, I am so glad I saved my miles for that hunk of junk [^] And the same with PE actually works out at £21 more expensive than doing a MpM fare! Thats the end of my VA amex!

Originally posted by AndyR
Right Virgin can get bent now! Just rang up Flying club to request an economy fare to upgrade with miles to PE which comes out at £772 each!!!!! [:0]

What the hell is the point collecting miles if its like this? I've got 67k miles and

Andy,

If you've already got 67k Miles then just buy another 8k and then you have enough for a Reward PE flight.....much cheaper than all the options you've listed so far.

That may be the best option.

Isn't a reward flight the same as a companion flight? If so that was too expensive to start, plus I need two tickets.

Think I'll just end up getting a bog stanard economy fare here and stuff collecting miles from now on. Its not really a benefit is it having to spend double on flight just to use your miles.

Originally posted by AndyR
Isn't a reward flight the same as a companion flight? If so that was too expensive to start, plus I need two tickets.

No. You can use your miles to buy a seat in its own right - look at the spend miles section of the VS website.

For £135 (which is enough to buy the 8k miles you need) plus tax you can get a reward seat in PE to Orlando using this method (by redeeming 75000 miles) and then book a low class PE for the other person which is currently £889 on the dates you have shown. So 2 PE seats for a total:


£135 for extra 8k Miles
£163 tax for Reward seat
£889 for K Class PE

Grand TOTAL £1187

Makes an average of £593 per person which is much cheaper than the other options you have shown an about £140 more than economy.

Plus they have reward seats available now.....

If this isn't clear let me know and I can PM you.

Thanks yes its clear. Bit bummed though as I would have to use all my miles or I could just keep getting £150 of each time by using 7500 miles. Much better in the long run but your option is better for me at the moment.

I am really bummed though at VA benefits of the miles. I really thought it would be better than this, it was cheaper for me last year when I brought an economy to LA, then paid a £50 ticket change and paid for the upgrade, that it would be for me this time do do the same but use miles! Really doesn't seem that much of a benefit.

Think I'm going to cancel my VA Amex, its just not worth it for someone who only travels once a year its just to expensive to use my miles other than using the whole lot in one go.

VA should really say under upgrades (when purchased with a full far ticket, which is actually only £5 cheaper than buying the ticket in the higher class to start with).

[Decker]

Well all the info is there Andy in the terms and conditions but I think you've nailed it on the head when you suggest that the miles are actually there as an incentive for those who fly more than once a year not for the very infrequent traveller. I'm sure that if you were trying to structure a bonus scheme as a businessman you'd go after the "low hanging fruit". As an another example of when miles really work - I had to send a member of staff from the US at VERY short notice (coming over next Friday although return trip not booked until March. The client had a VERY aggressive travel budget so I had the choice on the night flight of a Q economy fare at $250 or an L at $410. With the L I could use 10,000 miles to move him to PE. At this notice the only PE available was an S so over $1,000. So the 10,000 miles saved me over $300.

So it DOES work if you have the freedom and flexibility to juggle a bit.

I can see where your coming from and appreciate that yes. My only gripe now is I didn't realize the price difference would be so much! I knew from the T&Cs that you had to purchase a full fare but I didn't for one minute believe that the full fare would only be £3 cheaper than actually booking a standard ticket in the higher class.

I thought by booking 9 months early that it might give a few more options in terms of price but it didn't so I'm a little disappointed. May end up just using MpM to fly economy for £390 and stop collecting points. Really disappointed

[Decker]

I am gutted for you and it doesn't help that know it alls like myself say "but it's all there in the T&Cs"... bizarrely you can frequently get better deals with miles by leaving it later but then you're in an uncertain position if it fails.

The weird thing is I'm seeing upgradeable Y tickets (in L) at £602 for those dates but the cheapest K is £709. So 10,000 miles only saves you £107. Not the best exchange.

No thats what I meant. One of the options Flying Club gave me, can't remember exactly what class/combo now, but it was more expensive to buy a ticket before using miles to upgrade than it was to buy the ticket outright so you effectivly wasted miles. Strange scheme.

Oh well, at least I'm not tied to using Virgin in the future now as there isn't much point me collecting miles anymore. Shame

I think the big winner with miles is the upgrade to upper from PE/Econ. The price difference between an upgradable econ fare and a cheap PE fare is relatively low (sometimes Y is more than K) whereas the price difference between Y and a Z fare is typically a lot. Therefore 60,000 miles would probably be "worth" more when upgrading to upper than using 20,000 for PE.

If you did go for the VH route you would be nearing having enough miles to do that in future or a little more spend on the old AMEX would get you to being able to get full reward flights.

The other slight skew on this is that there are a lot of sale fares around at the moment which makes the difference between discounted fares and full fares much larger.

Thats probably what it is as the dates I was looking to book fall under the sale fare period,. Still a bummer though as it was cheaper for me to pay last year than it would be to use my miles this year.