Virgin Reward seat sale

[claypole]

I became a bit of a BA Air miles nit over past two years....I hate tunring right on a plane, but do not have the bankroll needed to turn right.  If you get family and friends help and play the game, can rack miles up...

I have a black BA Amex which I pile everything on getting 1.5 miles per £ and a companion voucher at £10k which means if I spend £10k, I can spend 100k air miles on a business class flight and get second for just taxes.

They have an online shop, where you can link through John Lewis, Comet, TM Lewin, Sky, literally tonnes of shops getting 1 to 14 miles more per £ spend (more if use Amex obv).  Tesco club card also exchanged etc - soon racks up!

[Free_Rollin]

 Upper is soooooooo much better than Premium, AINEC.

So true. Upper is so much more comfortable.

Also if you're flying back from Vegas, you get to use the lounge when flying upper, so you can have a few drinks (Crown and coke ftw) because that terminal is pretty awful otherwise.

edit to add: Also some of the sales are pretty decent. I managed to get a BA return to Vegas for £1600. If I remember correctly it was booked in October/November, for flight in the following year.

[Marky147]

Think I'm gonna book premium out, economy back and then try the 30k miles upgrade to upper on the most depressing flight of the year.

I've just looked and I can get 22nd June - 9th July for £850 which is good enough and better than I was expecting. I was gonna go out and stay until the end of the ME next year but flights go up like £270 and it's not much diff to me when I'm there as long as I can play a few tourneys while I'm there.

[redarmi]

Isn't it 30k per cabin to upgrade though??  ie if you want to upgrade from economy to upper it is 60k...30k from econ to prem and 30k from prem to upper.

[Simon Galloway]

thats round trip prices quoted:


Economy to Premium Economy   20,000 miles
Premium Economy to Upper Class  40,000 miles
Economy to Upper Class          60,000 miles

[paulhouk03]

is virgin air miles thing really good?

I was gonna get a air miles credit card but i didnt know which one was the best to go on.

[Marky147]

So if I could find someone to 'gift' me a 22k miles and then buy 30k myself. I could try for an upper class upgrade both ways if I book econ initially

[Simon Galloway]

is virgin air miles thing really good?

I was gonna get a air miles credit card but i didnt know which one was the best to go on.

I haven't done a market comparison, I just fly on Virgin a fair bit so it wasn't a tough call.

There's a free white card, and a fee for their black card, worth it if you spend a lot on cards.

For: Miles rack up each month, which means your miles balance doesn't expire dormant.  Pay it off in full and who cares about the APR.

Against: Plenty of retailers don't accept Amex (including some Virgin brands!)

If you are going to take out a card, (or just want to join flying club) PM me.  There is a referral programme where both parties get bonus miles for the new business.

[vegaslover]

  There is a referral programme where both parties get bonus miles for the new business.

Yep, defo this. If you know anyone who isn't a member and flies with Vrigin, the bonus miles could soon add up

[Graham C]

Bumping an oldish thread.

I'm currently using my Visa card for work things but their reward points are pretty crappy.  I spend a fair bit a month (£2.5kish) and still only have enough for £100 off something at John Lewis or something after a year or so of saving.   Would obviously love to go to Vegas for the pokers and having a free (except taxes) flight would help a lot.  Am I better off with the Virgin Card or someone mentioned the BA Amex card.   Looking at it, the BA one seems better.  It's 8500 Avois points for a return to LV in business and you get 9k for spending £3k or more in the first three months, surely that's too good to be true.  How easy is it to get tier points?  It's also 140 of those.  I'm not a regular flyer but I can spend the £ on the card which would hopefully help.

Hardest part is getting the Mrs's ok to go without her !

Any advise welcomed

[AndrewT]

Where do you see 8500 points for a business return to LV? It's way more than that - I make it 100,000.

[Girgy85]

I spend quite a lot of monies on fuel would i be better off getting an Asda credit card and filling up there every day and paying off the bill monthly?

[Graham C]

Where do you see 8500 points for a business return to LV? It's way more than that - I make it 100,000.

http://www.britishairways.com/travel/flight-calculator/public/en_gb#results

LHR to LAS

8522 Avios and 140 Tier points.

[Simon Galloway]

Bumping an oldish thread.

I'm currently using my Visa card for work things but their reward points are pretty crappy.  I spend a fair bit a month (£2.5kish) and still only have enough for £100 off something at John Lewis or something after a year or so of saving.   Would obviously love to go to Vegas for the pokers and having a free (except taxes) flight would help a lot.  Am I better off with the Virgin Card or someone mentioned the BA Amex card.   Looking at it, the BA one seems better.  It's 8500 Avois points for a return to LV in business and you get 9k for spending £3k or more in the first three months, surely that's too good to be true.  How easy is it to get tier points?  It's also 140 of those.  I'm not a regular flyer but I can spend the £ on the card which would hopefully help.

Hardest part is getting the Mrs's ok to go without her !

Any advise welcomed

Virgin now offer a Visa card to go alongside the Amex (you get 2 cards on teh same account, so you can use Visa any time the Amex isn't accepted.)

If you take their black card (£140 p.a.) and spend everything on Amex:

2.5k monthly = £30k p.a.  That would be 6k bonus miles for joining and 60k miles on spending for 66k miles total.  In the process, you would also earn vouchers for two premium economy reward upgrades and a complimentary companion reward flight (no excuse not to take the missus)

On top of that, if you spend a decent portion of that £2.5k/month on shopping online, you can use the Virigin shopping link to get significantly more miles to boot.  

It would be quite possible that each year your card rewards would amount to a 'free' upper class flight.  OR, a couple of economy reward flights, insta-upgraded to premium, with a free third economy reward flight to go with it.

There is also a white card with no fee, divide the above rewards by two.

[AndrewT]

Where do you see 8500 points for a business return to LV? It's way more than that - I make it 100,000.

http://www.britishairways.com/travel/flight-calculator/public/en_gb#results

LHR to LAS

8522 Avios and 140 Tier points.

That's how many you earn on the flight, not what you can buy it for.

Otherwise you could fly once and fly for free ever after.