Was hoping for some advice - I know you kind people often say that we can post our quotes here and you'll give advice/better quotes.
We have 44000 miles (mostly from compensation for a VERY long delay home from MCO via Boston last year), and now are looking at 17 days in Orlando, from Gatwick, next May (2013) with possible dates being the 16th (although we are flexible +/- a few days), economy. The flyer miles are all on 1 account, being my DH. We are 2 adults and 2 children.
We have 2 options:
Option 1:
Spend £30 to get another 1000 flying miles, to get to 45000 miles, and then get 1 adult return for free - however that adult will still cost £315 in taxes inc the extra £30 for the extra miles. The total combined for the rest of us (1adult and 2 kids) is £1728 (£626 for an adult). The total amount for this option is £2043 with no flying miles remaining as they would all be spent.
Option 2:
Using miles plus money means we would spend 4800 flying miles (2000 per adult and 400 per child) over the 4 of us giving us a total of £2111.20 - the quote given via telephone with VA. This would also mean we would not spend all our flying miles leaving us with 39000
My DH thinks we should go for option 1 as its still the cheaper one (by £68!) - as he sees it if you get a similar price with M+M with only 4800, to spending 45000 on 1 return ticket (an amount we would never raise again), we may as well save £68 and do the M+M option every other trip we have. I do agree we would easily raise 4800 flying miles for each trip as we buy all our food and petrol etc with our VA American express credit card (and sadly we CERTAINLY spend more than £4800 a year on those 2 things alone!).
Myself I'm tending towards Option 2 as I think it would be good to keep the miles - not sure why though! I just wonder if maybe sometime in the future, if we keep saving, we may have got to 90000 miles and be able to go taxes only with 2 adults OR maybe use the miles for upgrade to PE OR some other perk I don't yet know about. I would also mention that I know we will be paying for this cost with our VA Amex card and therefore will earn just over 2000 miles even though we don't earn miles with M+M.
What does everyone else think? Is there anyway we can use M+M and then use the rest of the miles for free upgrade? Are there any other perks I'm missing? We also need a car for the whole time we're there so I'm also wondering if there would be anything cheaper out there with any other company that we haven't looked at (we've only looked at VA), maybe as a flydrive.
Thanks everyone
We have 44000 miles (mostly from compensation for a VERY long delay home from MCO via Boston last year), and now are looking at 17 days in Orlando, from Gatwick, next May (2013) with possible dates being the 16th (although we are flexible +/- a few days), economy. The flyer miles are all on 1 account, being my DH. We are 2 adults and 2 children.
We have 2 options:
Option 1:
Spend £30 to get another 1000 flying miles, to get to 45000 miles, and then get 1 adult return for free - however that adult will still cost £315 in taxes inc the extra £30 for the extra miles. The total combined for the rest of us (1adult and 2 kids) is £1728 (£626 for an adult). The total amount for this option is £2043 with no flying miles remaining as they would all be spent.
Option 2:
Using miles plus money means we would spend 4800 flying miles (2000 per adult and 400 per child) over the 4 of us giving us a total of £2111.20 - the quote given via telephone with VA. This would also mean we would not spend all our flying miles leaving us with 39000
My DH thinks we should go for option 1 as its still the cheaper one (by £68!) - as he sees it if you get a similar price with M+M with only 4800, to spending 45000 on 1 return ticket (an amount we would never raise again), we may as well save £68 and do the M+M option every other trip we have. I do agree we would easily raise 4800 flying miles for each trip as we buy all our food and petrol etc with our VA American express credit card (and sadly we CERTAINLY spend more than £4800 a year on those 2 things alone!).
Myself I'm tending towards Option 2 as I think it would be good to keep the miles - not sure why though! I just wonder if maybe sometime in the future, if we keep saving, we may have got to 90000 miles and be able to go taxes only with 2 adults OR maybe use the miles for upgrade to PE OR some other perk I don't yet know about. I would also mention that I know we will be paying for this cost with our VA Amex card and therefore will earn just over 2000 miles even though we don't earn miles with M+M.
What does everyone else think? Is there anyway we can use M+M and then use the rest of the miles for free upgrade? Are there any other perks I'm missing? We also need a car for the whole time we're there so I'm also wondering if there would be anything cheaper out there with any other company that we haven't looked at (we've only looked at VA), maybe as a flydrive.
Thanks everyone
