How to fly Virgin Atlantic properly

[Graham C]

Cheers, better check through my old emails!

[Simon Galloway]

We’re delighted to tell you that you’ve earned a Premium Economy reward upgrade simply by using your Virgin Atlantic White American Express® Credit Card from MBNA. So you can now upgrade an Economy reward redemption (an Economy flight bought with your Flying Club miles) into a Premium Economy flight!¹

That was my email, feel free to search on that wordage if it helps.

[MLHMLH]

You can't see them in your account.. you just get an email from them shortly after you qualify for it.  They give you a special phone number to call, you have a date range in mind (not always going to be possible to land fixed dates) and you call them to book the economy reward seat with your voucher code which insta-turns it into a premium.

You can see them in your statement in the Your Account section of the Flying Club.  Obv sign in and go to this area.  Amend the statement period to 1 year and click Update.  If you have qualified for the PE upgrade it will be listed with an activity description of "VAA Credit Card Econ>Premium Reward Upgrade".  You have to have booked this upgrade 12 mths from the date it was applied to your account (shown on the statement) but you don't have to fly within that 12 mths, it just has to be booked within that timeframe.

I've just looked at my Flying Club statement online for last 12 months and I have a PE Reward Upgrade voucher & a Companion Flight voucher (the latter I hadn't even spotted before!).  The Companion Flight activity description comes up as "VAA Credit Card Companion Flight Qualification".

[Simon Galloway]

ty, still haven't found it but good to know.

[Graham C]

Cheers,

VAA Credit Card Companion Flight Qualification

I take it that's the companion flight one?  Had that back in March, no sign of the PE Upgrade and I've definitely spent the money on the card.   Also only have the one companion thing on my statement.

If that's the free companion flight, can I use it for any class?  Basically I'm thinking of San Fransisco for the Mrs and my daughter.  I have approx 85k miles atm, one free flight and two at 46,667 would make that a bargain.  Happy to top up the miles of course.  Failing that, a free flight and two normal economy is pretty good value.  This is my way of sneeking to Vegas!  We have friends in SF too so that'd be quite nice.

[MLHMLH]

Cheers,

VAA Credit Card Companion Flight Qualification

I take it that's the companion flight one?  Had that back in March, no sign of the PE Upgrade and I've definitely spent the money on the card.   Also only have the one companion thing on my statement.

If that's the free companion flight, can I use it for any class?  Basically I'm thinking of San Fransisco for the Mrs and my daughter.  I have approx 85k miles atm, one free flight and two at 46,667 would make that a bargain.  Happy to top up the miles of course.  Failing that, a free flight and two normal economy is pretty good value.  This is my way of sneeking to Vegas!  We have friends in SF too so that'd be quite nice.

Yes sorry, just changed my post above to confirm the description of the companion flight as well.

The £15k spend has to have been using the AMEX card (spend on the Visa card doesn't count towards it).  If you look at your online MBNA statements you'll be able to work back and work it out but you might have to call them to get them to confirm the anniversary date of your card.  They'll be able to tell you which statement dates counted towards the accrual period for the £10k spend.

If you click the link below, there's a link on that page to the Companion flight terms and conditions.  It should answer your questions.  If in doubt call Virgin Flying Club.

http://uk.virginmoney.com/virgin/vaa-amex/tell-me-more.jsp#

[Graham C]

I should be ok, there's been easily more than 10k on the Amex card and it's 1 year since I signed up in December.  Will check dates with the boss and try and sort something out.

Thanks for explaining it.

[marshall777]

Simon they have very good deals in theory, but ive been trying to spend my miles all year and have been told 4-5 times through out the year that my "my choice of reward seat is not available at this time search again" or this 1 is better " reward seats often become available nearer the time of departure" anyone that uses virgin knows thats bullshit cause the flights always go up in £ nearer departure. I had a look at ure quad deal, very good deal BUT went on the site and tried alot of dates for june vegas time and guess what? " my choice of reward seat is not available at this time search again" i mean maybe im doing it wrong but it seems a big con to me mate?

[MLHMLH]

Simon they have very good deals in theory, but ive been trying to spend my miles all year and have been told 4-5 times through out the year that my "my choice of reward seat is not available at this time search again" or this 1 is better " reward seats often become available nearer the time of departure" anyone that uses virgin knows thats bullshit cause the flights always go up in £ nearer departure. I had a look at ure quad deal, very good deal BUT went on the site and tried alot of dates for june vegas time and guess what? " my choice of reward seat is not available at this time search again" i mean maybe im doing it wrong but it seems a big con to me mate?

I agree it can be very difficult to spend them.  I've rung up numerous times and complained about it.  I got a supervisor to come back to me after searching flights to Vegas for a whole month to find a flight I could redeem my points/voucher on.  She found one for me eventually.

[Simon Galloway]

It isn't a con as such... but they do have limited seats in P.E and in Upper, so obv they are trying to sell those to full fare paying customers as much as possible.  If the plan was for 8 mates on a trip to all cash in 100k miles and fly Upper together to Vegas on the same flight... ain't gonna happen.  Sometimes when I am playing with dates on the website, I click a date and the website holds the seat for 10 mins (or whatever it is) if I don't complete the booking but search again, the seat is temporarily unavailable, indicating that for that flight, they were only letting 1 reward seat go at that moment.  Couple of hours later, the seat is back available, most times.

For June in economy, atm you'd be flying out 14th or 16th and back again 25/28/29/30th.  That will definitely change over time, how much you can wait it out and how much flexibility you have will vary person by person.

June Premium not much showing atm, but with LA sale fare so low and pretty much daily availability, that would be worthy of consideration.

Upper not showing yet, whilst they aren't that liberal with availability, I've usually managed to get something sensible around a fortnight's trip, booked several months in advance, acknowledging that I am pretty flexible on dates.

Flights often do go up near departure, but reward availability does get added, only a 1 min task to check daily. YMMV, but I've always been able to get something acceptable.  Similar to people that can't get the seats they want on the flight map, people do cancel trips, do change seats etc, a 1 min check per day and snap-move to your preferred seat when you get the chance, often happens a lot in the last few days as blocked out seats get released etc.

The other option for people that are inflexible on dates is to pay the cash fare in economy and go to the ground crew desk (not the check-in) and ask if there is any availability to use miles to upgrade.  25k miles would get you a 1-way upgrade to upper.

Sometimes worth a call and being nice to them, they may have info about intended availability etc.

[Graham C]

FWIW, for 3 people to get back from SF, I couldn't get a flight towards the end of May, all of June and all of July.  Didn't look at August.  If I want to go for a couple of weeks, it's going to have to be April.  Failing that, I'll talk the Mrs into letting me go alone

[beanolizzy]

hi
i'm pretty familiar with the rewards/airmiles programme and the info you give covers all the various positives and negatives in a much simplified form,great post.
One question though have Virgin changed maximum amount you can purchase as i thought it was 30,000 max per year?

[Graham C]

Yeah it says that it's a special one off to buy up to 50k atm

[beanolizzy]

ahh yeh just found it on the site thanks,


Limited time offer – Flying Club members can now buy up to 50,000 Flying Club miles, and receive up to 25% bonus miles for free!

[Drain Alien]

Virgin currently have a couple of very good promos, Booster and Buy Miles with bonus, which when used well with their current offer of a reward seat sale make for plenty of savings opportunities.

Miles Booster allows you to claim (or retro-claim) additional miles on flights based on miles flown.  So a return to Vegas (if you flew this summer just gone) you could retro-add what works out to be 22k miles for £328, or 11k miles for £171.  However, that should only be done to supplement miles that you have already bought, as the bonus on the Buy Miles makes that a better deal (you could currently buy 20k miles and get 4k bonus for £315) (some further examples below)

TheAce high

Random date selected in June 2013.  Econ = £800 P.E = £1280  Upper = £3600.  Benefits are that your cash fare will attract miles on the flight, and you don't have to muck about understanding the promos.

The One pair

Due to the Reward sale, you can fly from Mancs or LGW for 31,667 miles atm.  If you have some miles kicking around, great.  If you have zero miles, just buy them!  27,000 miles bought get a 5400mile bonus for £420, then you can snap-use those miles to buy an economy reward seat (+£350 tax)

If you have to buy all the miles, obv £420+350 = £770 and you may as well just pay £800 for the flight and earn miles on it.  But if you have most of those miles kicking around in your account expiring soon or whatever, then your flight cost tends closer towards £350.

The Straight

Fancy Premium? LV is 70k miles, but LA or SF is on sale at 46,667 miles (cheaper than normal miles for Vegas economy)  You can crunch the numbers, but if you fancy Premium at a discount, you could toy with a day in LA or SF (watch a ballgame etc) and catch a $cheap flight on SouthWest from there, or rent a car and enjoy the drive. (assuming you need to buy all the miles to LA/SF, £600 covers it, so not great value unless you had most of the miles already)

Quads
For those ballin but still just about in control, you can fly cheaper in Upper by a considerable margin.  50k miles to buy +12.5k bonus = £765.  Depending on how many miles you already had, you can buy more miles in Jan (new calendar year) or you could retro-add miles to your 2012 summer flight as above as needed.  Lets say you have ~20k miles in your account already, you can buy 62.5k for £765 and Boost 22k miles for £328.  Now you have enough for an Upper Reward fare, tax is about £480, so about £1500 to buy yourself a seat in Upper, pretty decent saving.

The Gatwick planes are still continuing the refits, but the majority should be in service by next Summer, but it is not out of the question if you run really badly (as we all do  ) that you could end up with an old'un.  They have taken a couple of rows out of economy, so the pitch should in theory be better etc.

I still think (and the maths supports it ^^) that the best value/savings are to go Upper on a reward ticket.  If you max the points you earn year-round on the various promos/partners that attract miles, it isn't hard to do)  Paying £480 tax to fly in Upper seems like a good deal when your mates pay £1100 last minute to go in economy because they weren't organised.

During regular priced mode, 100k miles for Upper is waaay better value than 50k miles for economy.  However, atm with the sale fare being 31,667 for economy, there's nothing wrong with that either.

Obviously this assumes you have a flying club account.  And of course if you don't, I'd be happy to help you get one with bonus miles added to it!

far too much time on your hands Galloway