Flying Club Points

We are planning a trip to MCO in June next year.

We have been working hard at collecting points with the Virgin AMEX Card, and have managed just over 75,000 points. The others traveling have about 25,000 points on their accounts. We would like to travel in Premium Economy (Upper Class way to expensive) but there seem to be lots of different ways to use the points.

Does anyone have any tips on the best way to do use Flying Club points to either get the cost of PE down or hopefully find a good way into UC?

Thanks for your help...

[Decker]

Welcome to V-Flyer Andrew

"The others travelling" - how many are there?

Thanks for the quick reply -great site.

There will only be 3 of us - I have 76,000 points and each of the others have their own Flying Club Account with 26,000 points on each of the accounts.

The best way that I can see at the moment is to use the 'Spend Miles' on my account and for the other to select the 'Miles + Money' offer.

I was hoping for UC but that is way to expensive at the moment...

I also have a 'VAA Credit Card Companion Flight Qualification' which is shown on my statement - not sure if this helps much though as the qualifying fairs seem to be more than double the price.

Thanks for all of your help.

[HighFlyer]

Hi Andrew, and welcome to V-Flyer [y]

You will all need 75k miles for a full reward flight in PE. You'll be okay, but your friends will be a bit stuck. You can buy miles, but they'll need more than you can currently buy (19k).

You could use that companion voucher to buy one PE fare and get another free, plus taxes. The PE fare you need to buy (S or W fare) will be more expensive than the cheapest available PE fare, as i gather you have found, but if you divide the cost by two people then it should work out cheaper in the long run - although the person on the companion fare wont get any miles or tier points. You can book your companion ticket for two of your friends if you wish, it doesnt have to be you travelling on it.

Miles plus money is another good idea, but again, no miles or tier points for those taking this option if that is a concern.

The other option is for you all to buy an economy fare and upgrade it with miles to a PE fare. You can buy an economy ticket booked in classes L B or Y and pay 20k miles each to upgrade the flights. This uses less miles but has an initial cost outlay. If you call Flying Club they can tell you what the cost of an L fare would be for the dates you want to travel.

As you can see, there are several options, it depends how much money you all want to spend or how many miles you want to use.

Thanks,
Sarah

Thanks Sarah.

Just to check a possible option - if I were to buy a qualifying fair in PE could I get 2 x companion flights or are you limited to one?

I was thinking I could use my 'VAA Credit Card Companion Flight Qualification' that I earned with my Amex Card to cover one and my points to cover the other. However I think from the T&C's you are limited to one Companion ticket?

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Andrew.

[HighFlyer]

My understanding is that each FC member can request one companion voucher in exchange for miles per year. Whether this is routinely policed i do not know. As you already have a free one and would only be requesting one with miles, i would think you would be fine. A quick call to Flying Club should confirm this though.

Thanks,
Sarah

If you mean can you get 2x companion flights when purchasing one qualiofying fare then no - one companion per paid ticket.

If you have qualified for a companion reward then you propbably will have also qualified for at least one of the econ-PE upgrade vouchers. Then you would buy an economy reward with miles and use the voucher to upgrade it to PE.