The Ultimate Guide to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Rewards Program

Virgin Atlantic are the UK’s third largest airline, exclusively offering long haul routes. They have a very modern fleet of just three aircraft types, and are arguably the best UK-based airline. In fact, I even included them on my (biased) list of top 5 airlines. With their recent announcement to join the Skyteam alliance, now more than ever it is worth looking into their Flying Club Reward Program to decide if it’s right for you. This is because you’ll also be able to earn miles on other Skyteam member airlines too. I wrote a full guide on which airline alliance you should choose here, you might find that flying Oneworld or Star Alliance would be better for you. So please read my Ultimate Guide to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Rewards Program.

Virgin Atlantic Airbus A330neo — Virgin’s new Airbus A330-900neo via Virginatlantic.com

Benefits and Membership Tiers

A full list of Virgin Atlantic Flying Club membership tiers can be found here. There’s a pretty long list of perks so I won’t include all of them here, but they are in line with what other airlines offer too.

Similar to British Airways you’ll need to earn “Tier Points” to upgrade to the next status level. Unlike British Airways though you won’t actually have to take many flights to increase your tier.

Silver Tier can be earned after just 1 return flight in Upper Class, Whilst Gold Tier after 2 returns and a one way Upper Class flight. That probably equates to around £3,000 spending for silver and £10,000 spending for gold. Of course Upper Class ticket prices vary dramatically depending on timing and route so your mileage may vary.

Virgin Atlantic have three different membership tiers:

RED (basic) – this just entitles you to earn miles on Virgin flights and spend your accrued miles. No other perks at this level.
SILVER – At silver tier you are entitled to premium check in, free economy seat selection and earn an additional 30% miles on all bookings.
GOLD (top tier) – At gold you are entitled to Upper Class check in, free lounge access, additional 60% miles on all bookings, extra luggage allowance and Gold Reward Seats (full details here)

Ways to Earn

Fly with Virgin Atlantic (and partners)

The easiest and fastest way to earn Virgin Points is by flying with Virgin Atlantic or Partner Airlines. A full list of Virgin’s Partner Airlines can be found here.

Virgin have a calculator to figure out how many points you could earn on a specific flight. The amount of miles will depend on what class and ticket type you’re travelling. An example return flight from London to Barbados could earn as little as 2,108 Virgin Points in Economy Light but up to 16,864 Virgin Points in Upper Class. This is for basic membership, if you have Silver or Gold you’ll get a bonus 30% and 60% miles respectively

The Virgin Atlantic Credit Card

I discussed the Virgin Atlantic Credit Card in more detail in my article here. You have the option of a no fee card and a premium card with a £160 annual fee. Obviously you’ll earn more points with the premium card but whether it’s actually worth the fee depends on your spending

I’ve included a short breakdown on what kind of value you can get out of each card using The Points Guy’s estimate of 1.2p per mile. Assuming they keep the 15,000 signup bonus the Reward+ card is definitely worth the annual fee.

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Credit Card — The points structure of both the free and premium version. Perhaps the most valuable perk is that a companion flight or upgrade is earned after £10,000 spend on the premium version vs £20,000 on the free version.

Buy Virgin Points

Another way to get miles with Virgin is to directly buy them with cash. You can buy 1,000 Virgin Points for £15 + an additional £15 transaction fee. Therefore it makes more sense to buy a large amount of points in one transaction. For example, buying 1,000 points will cost £30 (£15*1 + £15) but buying 100,000 points will cost £1,515 (£15*100 + £15). This means buying 1,000 points you’ll pay 3p per point. But if you buy 100,000 points it will costs 1.5p per point.

Transfer points from other providers

You can convert points from other rewards schemes to. For example American Express Membership Reward can be converted at a 1:1 ratio. 1 Tesco Clubcard Point can be converted for 2.5 Virgin Points

Ways to Spend

Reward Flights

The most obvious way to spend you Virgin Points is by redeeming on flights with Virgin. You can mix and match miles and cash to use however many points you want. This has the advantage of being able to redeem points, even if you don’t have enough for the whole flight. You can use their calculator to work out how many points a specific flight is. For Example a return flight from London to Barbados is 20,000 points in economy up to 115,000 points for Upper Class.

I’ve made a quick breakdown comparing Virgin Atlantic to British Airways and Singapore Airlines. This is simply because these are the three airlines I tend to earn the most points with. Additionally each of these airlines is from a different airline alliance which is helpful if you have a favourite. I got these estimates by searching each airlines websites and getting quotes for similar long haul flights during the same dates. Of course the actual points amount may change depending on what date and what time you’re flying, these are just indicative.

I found that if you want to redeem Virgin miles on economy flights it’s not really worth it as you get pretty poor value for money. However, redeeming on an Upper Class flight actually provides incredible value with a redemption rate of 2.7p per Virgin Point. This is more than double the value of a British Airways Avios point on a similar flight. If you can see yourself earning enough points to fly Virgin Upper Class then I definitely recommend redeeming this way.

Other Ways to Redeem

There are several other less lucrative ways to redeem Virgin Points, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend these over reward flights. Unless you don’t see yourself being able to redeem the points on flights that is. A full list can be found on Virgin’s website but briefly:

Virgin Atlantic Holidays – Package holidays organised by Virgin
Seat Upgrades – good if you’ve already booked your flight with cash
Airline Partners – Very useful if you want to travel a route not served by Virgin. There are a very wide range of airlines including: Delta, Air France/KLM, Singapore Airlines, Air New Zealand and more
Hotel Partners – including large chains such as IHG, Marriott and World of Hyatt
Car Rentals – such as Avis and Hertz
Donate your points to charity

Alternatives

You can of course earn miles with almost any large airline. I plan to release full guides on many more global airlines in the future, but that takes time… So for now here are my two top picks for alternatives to Singapore Airlines if you want to earn air miles.

British Airways

I wrote a comprehensive guide to the British Airways Executive Club here. But to cover it briefly, I think that for those based in the UK, British Airways is the best airline for earning miles and rewards.

There are many ways to earn Avios. First obviously is by flying British Airways (and other IAG airlines: Iberia, Aer Lingus, Vueling, and possibly Easyjet in the future?). You can also earn Avios through other Oneworld alliance airlines, see my post on the best alliances here.

I personally also earn Avios through both the Barclaycard Avios and my personal favourite, The American Express British Airways Card. By combining these methods I have been able to earn 100,000s of Avios. Most recently I redeemed 60,000 Avios for a return flight for 2 passengers from London to Geneva in Club Europe. For my full review of those flights click below:

Singapore Airlines

I’ve also written a guide to the Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer rewards program here.

I found Singapore Airlines to be very good when redeeming miles for use on a business class flight. However, they fell slightly flat on regular economy.

There are also a wide range of options for earning KrisFlyer miles, especially for those living in Singapore or Malaysia. However, if you’re UK-based like me then it’s more limited. I mostly earn through converting American Express Membership Reward points or by flying with Singapore Airlines or Star Alliance partner airlines such as TAP Portugal or Lufhansa. Most recently I’ve been able to convert ~100,000 MR points to KrisFlyer miles which is just enough for a return flight from London to Singapore in Economy

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