How to get the best out of my air miles

[evanss45]

Hi

I’ve been building my airmiles up for the last 18 months and I also have 2 companion vouchers from my Virgin CC.

I’ll be booking flights for a trip to Orlando shortly and want to be as clued up as possible to get the most out of the above.

Is it best to call Virgin when the outgoing flight becomes available or wait until the return flight becomes available a couple of weeks later?

My concern with waiting is the reward seats may have been used up for the outgoing flight by then.

Any advice would be great.

[WaynedP]

The headforpoints.com website is currently running a series of articles (search term = Virgin redemption university).

Worth reading these bite-size articles in full before coming back here with any specific, residual queries.

[evanss45]

Thanks. Ill have a little look.

[NorthernLass]

You can use one voucher on the outbound and the other on the inbound (so booking separately is perfectly possible), but what I don’t understand yet is whether that means you end up paying more in surcharges!

[AL]

NorthernLass wrote:

You can use one voucher on the outbound and the other on the inbound (so booking separately is perfectly possible), but what I don’t understand yet is whether that means you end up paying more in surcharges!

And, given a voucher is valid for a return trip, you can also use half a voucher, which comes in handy if you essentially want to reduce your fare outlay or want to upgrade only one sector.

To the original point, I would look at booking, as revenue, the lowest cabin you’re happy to travel in. If that’s Economy, and you’re hoping to upgrade to Premium, then look at Economy Classic (since you can’t upgrade from Economy Light and you’re paying a premium in Economy Delight for no benefit, if you’re bumping up).

Award availability is at https://travelplus.virginatlantic.com/reward-flight-finder but be aware that it isn’t wholly accurate – I got some G availability recently on reward seats that it didn’t show, so whatever it says, also run a check for a reward seat in your preferred cabin on virginatlantic.com.

Remember, though, that to upgrade, you must see availability in all intermediate classes – this really only applies to Upper from Economy, where there must be Premium first, otherwise you’re stuck.

To @NorthernLass’ point, the TFS can be recalculated by ticketing, so long as the second sector is booked on the original PNR and not as a separate PNR. Experienced agents tend to do this by default, in my experience, but newer ones might need a push in the right direction.