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Hi, I called virgin but spoke to someone who seemed to know as much as me, which isn’t much so I thought I would ask her in case you guys cab guide me please?
We want to fly UC 3 adults early September for a couple of weeks to Florida (Tampa)
We only have 172000 points and x1 companion voucher
The chap on the phone said we need roughly 250000 + £2,500
We have 23000 from Amex gold and 7/8000 from cc spends dropping in a couple of weeks but I’m nervous of missing the rewards spaces.
Would it be a good idea (good value) to buy 100000 points for £1,500? Or wait a couple of weeks and buy less, or buy economy seats and upgrade with no idea how many points?
£4000 sounds ok for x3 upper seats I think?
Don’t forget that the 172K points you currently hold have value, so it’s not really £4K for 3 seats.
It might be worth investigating the use of points for upgrade. Premium to UC upgrades off-peak will set you back 47,400 Virgin points each or 142,400 for three.
Headline price for Premium on dates I picked at random in early September were £900 return each, or £1000 for fully flex though I’m assuming there will be a cash uplift for the additional taxes and fees. It would probably be worth calling back to specifically ask them how that prices up for the dates you want to travel.
One option could be to use your voucher to upgrade a Premium redemption and upgrade a cash Premium cash booking with points for the other two seats – though this will almost certainly result in two separate bookings. Remember that using it as a companion voucher only gets you 2 seats for 1.5x points unless you have Silver or higher Flying Club status so even if you go down the buy points route using it as an upgrade voucher on one of the seats may work out (slightly) better.
Travelling on or after 5th September will move it to off-peak territory, which will help.
**142,200 for three**
I’m forgetting that the Virgin vouchers can also be used to upgrade cash tickets, so the simplest/most cost effective solution may be to upgrade three Premium cash fares, using the voucher plus a total of 94,800 points.
I suspect you’re looking at an additional £310 each in carrier imposed surcharges, so that would probably work out for the three seats to be about £3600 non-Flex or £3900 fully flex total for the dates I looked at, a bit less than you were looking at for the redemptions with bought points and will leave you with a lot more points for your next trip. If you go for the fully flex and have to cancel it will also mean you get that money back, rather than points that you had to buy.
Thankyou so much Marks!
Great advice from Marks7389.
Just to update.
After a long chat on phone to VA that cut off last night ughhh, then a 7am call this morning, both very nice, helpful and patient people,
I booked
x1 UC full points
X1 companion voucher
X1 PE cash then upgraded to UC with pointsTotal cash paid was £3,037.62
Points used 166,000I’m ecstatic with that, Thankyou Marks for your help.
Sounds like a great result. Out of interest, did they manage to combine it on a single booking?
No, we have three different booking references, not sure if this is a problem if they change flights etc but I suppose we will find out.
No, we have three different booking references, not sure if this is a problem if they change flights etc but I suppose we will find out.
Did they offer (or did you ask them) to link the 3 PNRs? I’m not sure whether this actually makes any difference in practice (question to anyone who may know: does it?!) but I’ve always worked on the assumption that it can’t hurt to have at least a note on the bookings, if not a formal link/cross-reference, so that if there are any changes or irrops, at least the system or person manually reviewing has that information. I did read something about there being a TCP (? “To complete party” ?) option in some booking systems whereby individual passengers on different PNRs can be linked to ensure they are sat together etc, but I didn’t pay much attention as my interest at the time was in linking my own separate bookings to create one itinerary – not expecting that to provide any protection for missed connections, but my thinking was that it might have a bearing on any default/automatic re-bookings resulting from schedule changes or cancellations by the airline. No idea whether it actually does… 😉
TCP isn’t a field in PADIS, but it fits in one of the many notes fields. VS does use TCP (for example, there’s a 25/11/22 VSbulletin about young flyers which references agents using it https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/us/en/partner-hub/vsbulletins.html). TCP is considered when reviewing a PNR, because it will likely be picked up as something to flag to be aware of (e.g. if you’ve got a young traveller on one PNR and an adult on another, cancelling the young traveller annoys everyone even if it does look like they’re alone from the loadout).
The voucher must have been used for a redemption upgrade rather than a companion booking then (which is good as that will have saved you 2,500 points – assuming you don’t have Silver/Gold status), but still I would have expected that to have been combinable with the full point redemption seat. I’ve done exactly that using a single voucher for upgrade across a two seat booking. In fact, since it can be applied for both seats in one direction (the net effect of which is identical on the points cost) it wouldn’t make sense to say that they couldn’t.
That said, I would expect the PE upgrade to have to be separate so you would have had a split across two bookings anyway.
Assuming none of you have Flying Club status, it probably doesn’t make much difference. Except, as Jon says, if there is disruption you presumably want them to treat you all as a single party. For that reason it probably is worth seeing if they can link them.
For any booking management stuff, such as seat selection, and online check-in you’ll have to go into each booking separately but not really a big deal…
Marks7389 should have his own q&a 😂
I have a question. I have 210k points & two VA credit card vouchers.
We want to go to the Maldives June 24 UC as it will be our honeymoon.Would you buy an UC seat & then use one voucher, cash & airmiles?
Or buy PE seats & use two vouchers, points & cash.Im silver tier.
The fella on the phone said to wait while he makes sure our booking are linked or something like that so I think there are at least notes on the booking.
We have no status (red)
I checked us in separately and chose seats next to eachother, I guess the only thing could be changes potentially splitting us up but as it’s LHR – TPA only one flight a day, not sure how they could move us?
Appreciate your replies
Marks7389 should have his own q&a 😂
🙂
I have a question. I have 210k points & two VA credit card vouchers.
We want to go to the Maldives June 24 UC as it will be our honeymoon.Would you buy an UC seat & then use one voucher, cash & airmiles?
Or buy PE seats & use two vouchers, points & cash.Im silver tier.
On the basis that we’re talking about straight redemptions here (upgraded with two vouchers or using one voucher as a 2for1), not upgrading a cash booking… in this case it’s unlikely to make sense to upgrade a cash booking as you have more than enough points. Also assuming you’re travelling off-peak, which for 2023 would be after 5th June.
The points cost for two will be:
*100K points plus two vouchers (upgrade from PE redemption rate)
*115K points plus one voucher (2for1)Either way the cash element will be the same.
So it really depends on what else you’d use the second voucher for, if at all. It could be worth a lot more than 15K points if you have an alternate use for it, and you’d have enough points left over to do something with it especially whilst you’re Silver. OTOH if it’s otherwise going to expire you might as well use the two vouchers on the Maldives booking.
I checked us in separately and chose seats next to eachother, I guess the only thing could be changes potentially splitting us up but as it’s LHR – TPA only one flight a day, not sure how they could move us?
It’s unlikely to happen, but in the event either of the flights being cancelled they could reroute you on indirect flights (which would be partially at least on Delta or another partner) – or they could do what they tried to do to me and move you to a flight on a different day….
Marks7389 should have his own q&a 😂
🙂
I have a question. I have 210k points & two VA credit card vouchers.
We want to go to the Maldives June 24 UC as it will be our honeymoon.Would you buy an UC seat & then use one voucher, cash & airmiles?
Or buy PE seats & use two vouchers, points & cash.Im silver tier.
On the basis that we’re talking about straight redemptions here (upgraded with two vouchers or using one voucher as a 2for1), not upgrading a cash booking… in this case it’s unlikely to make sense to upgrade a cash booking as you have more than enough points. Also assuming you’re travelling off-peak, which for 2023 would be after 5th June.
The points cost for two will be:
*100K points plus two vouchers (upgrade from PE redemption rate)
*115K points plus one voucher (2for1)Either way the cash element will be the same.
So it really depends on what else you’d use the second voucher for, if at all. It could be worth a lot more than 15K points if you have an alternate use for it, and you’d have enough points left over to do something with it especially whilst you’re Silver. OTOH if it’s otherwise going to expire you might as well use the two vouchers on the Maldives booking.
Thanks very much. I would rather use two vouchers as will expire. Thanks very much!
Thanks very much. I would rather use two vouchers as will expire. Thanks very much!
When do they expire? I think I saw someone say recently that they only have to be booked before expiry, but the VA Credit Card terms and conditions say you have to have to take the outbound flight before expiry.[/quote]
Thanks very much. I would rather use two vouchers as will expire. Thanks very much!
When do they expire? I think I saw someone say recently that they only have to be booked before expiry, but the VA Credit Card terms and conditions say you have to have to take the outbound flight before expiry.
[/quote]
Ive got one that expires Nov23 which I wont use & expire. Another one valid until 28th June 24 & will have another one by April 23 valid for 24 months.
Thanks very much.
Well done, I ended up doing similar in the virgin red 50% off – one voucher used as comp and one as upgrade (from my wife’s ac for her). We have 4 pnr’s, even the lap baby has her own one. I can’t wait till Feb in tampa, we decided to stay at North reddington beach with hh points (finally used all of them now too!)
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