Virgin Atlantic improves Flying Club – should British Airways flyers switch?

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• littlefish says:

  8 Jul8 July 14:07

  Interesting piece. I would like to join Virgin Flying Club as a back-up to avios … simply to give more chances to get reward flights near the dates I want. However, they still aren’t even in the game post these changes (arguably puttting economy up to 100% will simply increase the miles in circulation and make rewards tougher). The cancellation policy is still a killer; as is no genuine 2f1. AAdvantage it will probably be then, which is sub-optimal as pretty much the same inventory.

• Vernon says:

  8 Jul8 July 14:25

  From my reading of Virgin’s Miles Booster page (http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/gb/en/flying-club/miles-booster.html), miles bought via this method now cost only 1p each (+ no transaction fee), instead of the usual 1.5p each.

  • Rob says:

    8 Jul8 July 15:44

    …. in which case, it is more interesting. Good to see Virgin has finally seen some sense here.

• callum says:

  8 Jul8 July 15:10

  It is neither “morally wrong” to travel long-haul on maternity leave nor do Virgin leave themselves open to legal action due to “discrimination”. That has to be one of the most absurd paragraphs I’ve ever read on the topic of frequent flier programmes!

  While I can see how it would be difficult to achieve 10 years of gold while giving birth to children, giving birth doesn’t give you a legal right to get everything you could have gotten had you not decided to have children. I fully support the various laws and regulations about maternity leave etc. but special allowances on airline status retention is a bit silly (great should the airline decide to give them, but certainly not a legal matter).

  • Rob says:

    8 Jul8 July 15:43

    10 ‘consecutive’ years is the key.

    Trust me, under UK law this is almost certainly discriminatory!

    • DV says:

      8 Jul8 July 19:38

      I think Raffles is right about this. And it is morally questionable to make it harder for a female frequent flyer to obtain a benefit her male counterpart would be entitled to because she has spent part of her working life on maternity leave.

      • Alan says:

        8 Jul8 July 19:55

        Perhaps naively I’d assumed all other programmes (apart from Starwood, as I remember reading more about how they did things) required consecutive years? Didn’t bmi? Regardless I’d say it suits all of us better for consecutive years not to be a requirement – I think it’d makes more sense to look more at total number of miles/TPs, etc. as some of the hotels do. Of course lifetime status is potentially a pretty short-lived concept, as we saw from bmi!

    • callum says:

      8 Jul8 July 22:11

      What law is that then? While of course there are many protections in place for women when they have children, I’m pretty sure there is no carte-blanche law that states they get special treatment in things like loyalty schemes. Should they also get compensatory miles for the journeys they would have made had they not had the child?

      And arguably, you two are being just as discriminatory against men as they are against women. You are aware men are entitled to 7 months paternity leave (subject to the mother taking less)? Obviously men are in the minority in this regard, but anti-discrimination rules are all about protecting the minority after all!

      • Rob says:

        9 Jul9 July 06:41

        Here is an example of ‘implied discrimination’ taken from a legal website. If a company pays a higher % bonus to full-time staff than part-time staff, then it is acting illegally. This is because women are more likely to work part-time because of child-care requirements, and thus are facing ‘implied discrimination’ in a company that pays full-time staff higher bonuses.

        I struggle to see how this example differs from VS.

• luckyjim says:

  8 Jul8 July 18:46

  But men are entitled to take 26 months paid paternity leave if the mother returns to work. The fact that most don’t is down to the unfavourable terms (in the UK). Ironically Virgin’s policy is only ‘discriminatory’ in countries where men and women do not have equal rights to post-natal leave.

  I do agree though that ‘any’ 10 years would be better.

  • Mark says:

    8 Jul8 July 23:48

    Notwithstanding any trading of parental leave entitlements, there is also the issue that most airlines won’t allow you to fly in the final stages of pregnancy. Admittedly that doesn’t make it impossible to maintain status across consecutive years, just harder, and that’s one thing you can’t trade. To me that would be the discriminatory issue since Virgin will not be concerned whether the qualifying flights are business or leisure related, nor who is paying for them.

    To be honest the consecutive year rule says to me that this is more about dangling a carrot of dubious value that most people will never achieve, rather than genuinely rewarding loyal custom. Most people who travel for work will go through periods where they travel less and may not maintain status – it doesn’t mean they are flying with a competitor necessarily.

• Matt H says:

  9 Jul9 July 12:35

  Virgin status would be a much more attractive proposition if they joined SkyTeam and improved their credit card offering. The lack of an alliance and short haul network keeps me with BA, I do like virgin but not enough to sacrifice my short haul perks such as lounge access within Europe.

  • Rob says:

    9 Jul9 July 14:49

    The credit card itself is OK as far as earning rates go – it is just the 241 voucher which is pathetic (and of course the fact you still pay Virgin’s huge credit card surcharge when you use their card to pay for VS flights!).

• Phil says:

  10 Jul10 July 12:08

  Virgin will retain you as gold for maternity and paternity reasons.
  http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/frequentflyer/membershipbenefits/goldbenefits/index.jsp
  look under the “Other Benefits” heading. They have always done this.

  • Rob says:

    10 Jul10 July 12:40

    Thanks Phil, good spot

• NohoMan says:

  21 Jul21 July 17:21

  I had an Amex Centurion card which I cancelled a few years ago after the annual fee became £1500 from around £600. I received virgin gold status card because of it. I had never had virgin status before.I just checked into Virgin economy at HTW T3 and was told I could use the lounge as had a gold card number. They offered this without my asking, however once at the lounge they looked me up in the system and was turned away.

  I guess that tells you the gold card from Amex is not for life….

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