Orlando, best use of miles to upgrade

Help! My wife and I want to go to Florida in February and we’d rather go up the pointy end, preferably the really pointy end. Our dates are flexible and there is some good upgrade availability at present. I will have over 80,000 FCC miles by then and my wife will have over 40,000. I have a VCC companion ticket available and we both have over 50,000 miles with Delta (don’t ask). The Delta miles will get us economy tickets but I imagine that they are issued in G bucket and therefore I believe that they are not upgradeable. In other words the Delta miles are only any use for stand alone tickets and can’t be used as leverage to better things. I could buy a full fare economy ticket and then upgrade that to, possibly, PE one way and UC t’other (80,000 miles for the two of us, I think) or perhaps UC both ways (120,000 miles, but then I would have to somehow merge the two accounts. Is that possible?). I could buy a full fare ticket and use the VCC companion and then upgrade the full fare but I don’t think that I can upgrade the companion with miles, or can I? Any suggestions would be welcomed as to how I can achieve this and also any guesses as to the lowest “full fare” prices that I would have to pay for PE and Economy. With my limited understanding I have looked at the various options but have been incredibly impressed with the solutions that contributors to this forum have found for others in similar predicaments in the past so any advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

[RichardMannion]

First of all welcome!

To answer your question - I will dissect it first.

- The Delta miles are useless, they can no longer be used to redeem on VS. Also, they would not have been issued in G for an Economy reward (G is for Upper, T is for Economy ).

- Using the companion voucer is good value if you plan on flying in PE, as you can buy an S for less than #1k and then pay the taxes on the free ticket - often resulting in 2 PE seats for around #550 each; which is often cheaper than available Economy fares.

- You can combine miles in a 50/50 or 75/25 fashion. You can do a search to find out more about this if needed, but in a nutshell, you can split the legs into two separate sectors and each pay 50% of the cost of the reward.

- Going on the last point, you could buy L, B or Y class Economy (L beign the cheapest) seats and then use 60k miles each to upgrade to Upper (requirng G class availability), with the 60k coming from either:
a) one account
b) 30k from two accounts
c) 45k from one account, and 15k from another

or you could buy S or W (S being the cheapest) Premium seats and then use 40k miles each to shift up to Upper; again:
a) one account
b) 20k from two accoutns
c) 30k from one accountm and 10k from the other

- You could always buy a full fare J ticket and use your companion voucher, this will be the most expensive route (about #4k) but will preserve your miles.

- If you wanted to breakup onboard, you can book an L,B or Y (S or W for PE), and use your companion voucher to get another seat in the same or lower class. You could then use miles to move up a class and leave your partner behind. So if you bought a S, you could get a another PE seat via your VCC and then use 40k miles to upgrade roundtrip to Upper for yourself.

It all depends on how much cash you want to throw at the equation really.

Hope this helps,
Richard

I had a similar amount of miles between me and my better half, ended up splashig 50k on a 2 PE tickets to NY (better value than the 62.5k to MCO) and 80K on 2 UC returns from SFO (you could do MCO direct back to LGW).

Internal flights to MCO are cheap as chips in the US ... was quoted £60 each way to TPA.

With this option you only pay for the taxes and there is some mile earning potential depending who you fly with in the US.

Just another option.

Thanks to both of you for your replies. I fear that this time I will burn the Delta miles just to use them before they go completely bust but the PE companion looks attractive for the future and the JFK or EWR option is also one to bear in mind.
Many thanks for your advice.