Spending Miles Plus Money - Virgin Atlantic

[Rascal1003]

We have flown to Orlando for the last 2 trips on Miles-Plus-Money fares and have never had a problem with getting the flight dates that we want, but it seems a little different this year.

We are DVC members and always go mid-September, usually a Monday, and checked the air-fares before booking the accomodation and everything seemed to be OK.

So, now that the accomodation dates are set, we find out that VA dont have Miles Plus Money availability on our dates (outbound OR inbound). We can have the next day for both flights no problem, and really annoyingly, we can have full fare tickets on our specified dates.

Anyone had experience of this, or indeed know why this is the case?

Many thanks.
Russ

[wayneg]

We have used Miles and Money or just Miles for flights for last 2 years, all in school hols and saved about £5,000. Now it is almost impossible to use miles in school hols, they obviously don't need to discount the fares like they did.
In school term time last few flights I have looked at the full fare has been cheaper than M&M.
If your dates are not showing but next day is I guess they have sold the allocation of M&M seats, they only have a very limited amount on each flight, if a group of people have booked for that date they can easily be all taken in one booking.
I got M&M seats for Easter but August were non existant so used miles for a free flight and coming home indirect with BMI(who I prefer) Xmas doing a VH package as its a lot cheaper to take a hotel (£580) compared to flight only (over £900) again no M&M available.
Next year I can see us looking for more indirect flights, thankfully we love stopping off and seeing other airports and skylines so its no big deal waiting a couple of hours for another plane.

[Netty]

This has happened to us when loking for fares, we have loads of miles but find it difficult to use them. Virgin seem to let you get the miles but then make it harder for you to spend them..

[LORNA ANN]

We just booked flights using miles plus money for January no problems, maybe it depends when you want the flights Jan. obviously slow season. First time we have done this was a little suprised that we had to pay the whole thing straight away ! And already have our tickets e-mailed to us !

[wayneg]

We just booked flights using miles plus money for January no problems, maybe it depends when you want the flights Jan. obviously slow season. First time we have done this was a little suprised that we had to pay the whole thing straight away ! And already have our tickets e-mailed to us !

Booking low season with Miles is tricky, You have probably paid around £400(just under) for M&M in Jan, full fare maybe £450ish, around £50-60 a ticket saving, spent 2,000miles pp and can't(not supposed to) claim your 8,000+miles for your trip in Jan, so really costing 10,000+miles. Ok you have saved a little, problem is as we have said its low season, chances are next sale that comes around your dates will be discounted to less than you have paid M&M.
I know I learned the hard way a couple of years ago:mad:
Best M&M discounts over the past 2-3 years have been in school hols, averaging £300pp discount, like Easter last year £291 or August £533, full price was at least £300pp more and never came down. Problem is M&M fares have dried up for school hols now, almost non existant. Maybe the good days have gone for flying club deals but I hope not.

[markndean]

We have booked free flights for September with miles, we couldn't get the exact dates that we wanted, but going the day before and retuning a day earlier, so it wasn't too bad.

We have stopped using M&M as it wasn't saving us that much, and at least with full price flights you get another 8400 miles!:wave2:

[Jakey Rowling]

Personally with Sep being such a low demand month anyway, I would suspect that the saving for M+M would be minimum.

The recent Virgin sale would highlight that.

I wouldn't use them for less popular months like Sep.