50k Miles to Burn:- ideas?

Both my wife and I have 50K VS miles.

We are not VS FF so it is unlikely we'll get many more and even so it would be at a slow trickle (this lot took me 2 years)

My thoughts as to how to burn these are:

A One way UC flight (and then burn some BD miles or even pay[:0] to get home).

Initially I think LHR-NRT or Vice versa

What are the pros\cons of either direction?

Any other trips I could burn these miles on effectively?

Thanks

[HighFlyer]

Hi there,

A one way revenue ticket is always billed at the full fare (so for a one way upper class flight, you'll be paying a one way full J fare, so you could do this but its not very economical!). You can spend 40k miles on a PE -> UC reward flight, so that is one option, though you'll need to pay for the Premium Economy flights. It depends on whether you want to spend as little cash as possible.

Personally, if you have the BD miles, I'd fly out one way in UC with VS and one way with the BD miles. Which way round you do it may depend on the route and availibility. With BD you can use your *A miles on a whole host of carriers so there is a lot of choice. You'd probably want to fly out on VS to visit the Clubhouse if you trip starts at LHR.

NRT is certainly a great place to visit. Perhaps flying out on VS and back on ANA?

I am sure more members can think of other helpful tips for you.

Thanks,
Sarah

Well, just purely FYI as I see you are not considering the US, this is just an example of how you can do it.

I have booked for Oct 08

X2 UC LHR-LAX for 50k each + taxes. (Miles accumulated from a cancelled MCO-ORD UC flight this year).

Our return will be LAS-DCA(3 night stopover)-IAD-FRA-MAN
Flying in 1st class all legs (Lufthansa for the IAD-FRA-MAN routes) using just 25k BD miles each and something like £280 each incl. taxes (miles+cash redemption), bargain.

We looked at booking LHR-LAX-LHR as return in S and using 40k miles to upgrade to UC but by the time we tagged on connecting flights VS wanted over £1600 each for that and given the BD miles we had it's just not worth it.

One way flights from the US (west coast) to UK in S were about £700 (due to the favourable ex. rate) which was another option (use 20k to upgrade to UC) but again, due to all our BD miles it wasn't worth it.

If you're flying east you're going to have stacks of options coming back on Star Alliance carriers.

You need to look up using the ANA redemption tool to check availability if you're not already aware of it? If not best get yourself off to the BMI forum on Flyertalk for lots of info

Or give them away????[;)]

Thank you all for the replies so far

catsilversword [:0]

daywalker
I'm 99% certain to be using the miles to visit NRT so no USA plans thanks. I do know of the ANA tool.
Availability seems good.Whereas a route to CPT seem to be scarce.

So which direction is the best value\experience on the LHR-NRT route?

Is the LHR Clubhouse experience better than the NRT CH?

Cost wise:
Being a MSE I see that the taxes for NRT-LHR are £44.00 whilst LHR- NRT is £154 [n]

Thanks

Hi
From my experience the LHR clubhouse is miles bigger and better than the NRT clubhouse (at least when I was there Nov 06). I found NRT a little small with nothing special on offer apart from some fantastic smoothies at the bar.We really enjoyed Tokyo when we visited for a few days and will certainly revisit in a few years time.