Best way to spend miles on flights?

[HighFlyer]

Hi There!

(just to say that i recently found this forum and it is fantastic!! Well done guys!)

I am a silver member and with my Virgin FC credit card i am starting to earn serious miles. Whats the best way to spend my miles?

If i buy an economy ticket and use miles to upgrade to UC, then i still earn miles on the economy leg of the journey dont i? Is this better than taking the whole journey in miles and getting no points?

What do you all do with your miles?

What about miles plus money? Is that worth it?

Im just interested in what you all feel is the best deal to have? I would like to use my miles towards UC flights.

Thanks

(and congrats on the forum!!)

[mitchja]

Hello and Welcome HighFlyer

I usually save up my miles and spend them on pure reward flights. Never tried miles + money but you obviously would not earn any miles on these fares. I would much rather spend my money on FC millage earning fares.

I'm about to take a return reward UC flight to SFO on Apr 18. It was 78,000 miles (2000 mile discount for booking online) + £64.40 taxes.

Regards

[Nottingham Nick]

I agree with James. UC flights are the best way of spending miles.

If you look at the cost in pounds / miles for economy flights and then compare the costs for UC travel then it is well worth saving up. The downside is the limted number fo reward seats available in UC. Obviously VS are reluctant to allocate high revenue seats that they could sell.

The downside to M+M, as James has said, is that they don't earn miles / tier points - BUT - if you only have a small number of points and are not going to be able to earn the 80K needed for UC travel or the 40K need ed for an economy seat, them they are a good way of using the points in your account.

Nick

I do not like m+m no miles or tps and not a very good price compared to some offer prices. I have just used 120k miles to upgrade 2x Y tickets (£1000 for both) to UC because the 4 TPs will be needed for our gold membership requalification.The companions rewards can sometimes be good if a few of you are travelling wife and I get full miles and tps 2 others go for free(saved about 1.5k on 4 PE tickets,these rewards were actual spend on VS card so did not cost any miles).As said before I would use the miles for full UC tickets if I did not need the TPs.As for transfers and VH vouchers these are not good value.

UC reward flight is definitley the most cost effective use of miles. (I did a comparrison on flights to NYC on specific dates and came up with a figure of £35.62 saved per 100 miles for an UC reward flight, compared to £11.22 for M+M, taking into account the miles not earnt on the M+M as wll as the miles spent.)

Having said that, I'm flying to NYC on an M+M fare later this month. I'm doing the tip on a budget and don't have enough for a reward flight - blew all my miles on UC to San Francisco last year!

My view on M+_M is that really its not a saving for UC.
Every time I have looked, its more expensive than discounted UC, plus you get the tier points for UC campared to Econ tier points.
For example
M+M for Orlando(VA web page) £1,991
APEX Discounted UC (Z) through FC £1,137

[HighFlyer]

Hi Guys

Thanks for all your responses!

I think that the straightforward UC flights for miles could be the way to go then!

We are currently saving for flights to South Africa, Cape Town on the way there and Jo'burg on the return. I check the VA website and the fares were between 5k and 5.5K so that seems a great saving considering we will get the flights for nothing. We will need to find another 20/25'000 FC points but that shouldnt be too hard, especially with the FC credit card.

I just need to balance it out to ensure that i still get enough tier points each year.

Thanks for all your help!!