Virgin miles upgrade query

[msdmjb]

Hi, I currently have 41k flying club miles on Virgin and I want to use some to upgrade from economy to premium economy (20k required). Somewhere deep within the terms and it states

"- Any Economy fares booked in Y class apply including Virgin Atlantic published, discounted, corporate, travel agent or tour operator type fares.
- Only Virgin Atlantic published Economy fares booked in B, L, or M class apply. All other ticket types such as but not limited to discounted, corporate, travel agent or tour operator fare types are NOT applicable. "

now does that mean me booking an economy flight (lhr-lax) via Virgin's website cannot upgrade as I thought those tickets were Y class ? Also, what is B/L/M when it comes to economy ?

For something that should be quite simple it all seems quite difficult for a layman to understand.

Thanks for your help

[silverelise]

I've just been through this myself with Virgin for a Gatwick-Barbados flight and had a few conversations on the phone with them so I understand how it all works now.

The website can sell you the cheapest economy ticket available on the route, and it can sell you a "miles plus money" ticket but it can't sell you an upgradable economy ticket - you have to phone for that.

I started this thread (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=309583) when I wanted to find out what all the ticket class letters meant.

[intortola]

Usually Y is full fare economy i.e it is changeable, refundable etc. The others are discounted or consolidated fares

[PAXboy]

With VS, when you want to upgrade from Y to PE, you have to pay more for the Y ticket. That is, it has a different ticket CLASS. There are many letters and each carrier has their version of it.

Phone and say that you want to pay for an economy ticket and upgrade to PE with miles. Then it's straightforward and they are always helpful. But you will pay more than the lowest fares that you saw on line. How much more? That depends on the route, the day, the advanced bookings, the history of traffic on that route ... all the usual things that enable airline to vary the price of a ticket every hour of the day.

Do book as early as you can because they (like all carriers these days) limit the number of seats that can be used for mileage redemption on each flight. If they have decided that only six seats on a particular route/day can have the Eco/PE upgrade and all six of those are already booked - then the flight is 'full' as far as you are concerned. They might have have another 50 seats to sell but you would have to pay cash for those.

However, the upgrade to PE is well worth it in my view. I have used the VS PE for the last ten years and always very pleased.