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

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If you are a member of Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club, you will have received an email last week outlining a number of genuine improvements to the scheme.

If you are not a member, and current fly exclusively on British Airways long-haul, you probably haven’t heard the news. I thought it would be useful to run through the changes and see if they justify switching some flights over to Virgin.

Here are the key changes:

Virgin Atlantic 747

Earn 100% of base miles flown on cheap Economy tickets

This is simply Virgin playing catch-up to BA, who moved to this model a couple of years ago. (To be fair, it puts Virgin and BA ahead of many non-UK frequent flyer schemes.) It is very generous, though – a cheapo Economy return to San Francisco (10,500 miles flown) would earn you enough for 3 one-way UK domestic flights on Virgin.

Fuel surcharges reduced on Economy Class redemptions

This is a very clever move by Virgin, and puts clear water between them and BA on some routes. Historically, redeeming for Economy flights was a bad deal because of the surcharges. This is no longer necessarily the case at peak times. Here are some sample surcharges I calculated recently, plus the miles required for Economy return redemptions:

New York £240 (British Airways: £359)  35,000 miles (40,000 Avios)

Barbados £237 (British Airways: £328)  45,000 miles (50,000 Avios)

Las Vegas £213 (British Airways: £356)  42,500 miles (50,000 Avios)

Johannesburg £362 (British Airways: £400)  50,000 miles (50,000 Avios)

Dubai £243 (British Airways: £335)  38,500 miles (40,000 miles)

Amount of miles you can buy annually increased from 30,000 to 100,000

Given that they are poor value at 1.5p each (although not as poor value as Avios, which cost even more!), I can hardly get excited about the chance to buy more! If you need to top-up your Virgin miles, get yourself an Amex Gold (20,000 Virgin miles as sign-up bonus) or Starwood Amex (25,000 Virgin miles as sign-up bonus)!

Transaction fee removed for ‘miles booster’

Miles Booster is just weird – see this post. I don’t see the point of it, especially now that the ‘buy miles’ limit is raised to 100,000 miles anyway.  (EDIT:  It appears that Virgin has recently reduced the price of miles purchased via ‘miles booster’ to 1p per mile.  On this basis, it actually represents a very good deal compared to buying miles directly.  I also retract my criticism of it :-))

Lifetime Gold membership after 10 consecutive years of Virgin Gold or 1 million base miles flown

Full details of Lifetime Gold are here.

All I can say here is: remember that we are talking about the ‘lifetime’ of Virgin Atlantic instead of your lifetime! If you think this is a great deal, I have plenty of ex-BMI ‘lifetime’ Gold members who will convince you otherwise! I absolutely would not change my flying patterns because of this.

And, as someone with a globetrotting wife who is also the mother of two children, the idea of needing 10 consecutive years of Gold for lifetime status is morally wrong – unless you expect people to be racking up long-haul business class flights during maternity leave.  It probably also leaves Virgin open to a legal challenge for discrimination.

It is not clear if people who receive free Virgin Gold via the Amex Centurion charge card will also receive lifetime status. It is also not clear if the ‘base miles’ requirement is purely on Virgin Atlantic or also partners.

Reduced entrance fees for No 1 Traveller lounges at Heathrow T3, Gatwick (North and South) and Birmingham

The price is £22.50 to £20 depending on your Virgin status, and you earn Virgin miles too. You can often find offers for No 1 Traveller elsewhere if you have a dig around, but this is not a bad one. Virgin Gold members earn a whopping 750 miles, which offsets a fair chunk of the £20 fee.

It is worth noting that even base level Virgin members get a discount, so it is worth joining Flying Club just to get a discount on the No 1 Traveller lounge if you’re interested.

In conclusion ….

The real winners from these changes are those who fly in Economy and redeem in Economy. And you can’t complain at that.

What Virgin DOES still miss, though, is a Family Account. At present, only Flying Club Gold members can set up accounts for children under 12, which feed the miles into the account of the Gold card holder. (Once over 12, a child can have their own account.)

For a family of four with 2 children under 12 flying to, say, Florida, you would still earn substantially more miles flying with BA.  A British Airways Household Account lets you earn miles from all 4 passengers at 100% of miles flown. Flying Club would only allow the two adults to earn miles, and those cannot be pooled when redeeming.


How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards

How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (November 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, the Reward+ card has a bonus of 18,000 Virgin Points and the free card has a bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

30,000 bonus points (TO 18 NOVEMBER) and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

3,000 bonus points, no fee and 1 point for every £1 you spend Read our full review

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 50,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 50,000 Virgin Points.

The Platinum Card from American Express

Huge 80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Small business owners should consider the two American Express Business cards. Points convert at 1:1 into Virgin Points.

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Points

(Want to earn more Virgin Points?  Click here to see our recent articles on Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club and click here for our home page with the latest news on earning and spending other airline and hotel points.)

Comments (35)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • BritBronco says:

    And still no change to the cancellation policy? That is the main reason I have never collected a mile with Virgin.

  • Rob says:

    I think he is referring to the draconian Flying Club cancellation policy – lose 25 per cent of miles when you cancel, lose 100 per cent when you cancel within 7 days.

    Compared, say, to BA’s ‘full refund outside 24 hours of departure’ rule.

    Good old BMI let you cancel at any point, even when sitting in the departure lounge!

    • BritBronco says:

      Yes exactly, the cancellation policy on award bookings. As a BA gold I’m able to make unlimited changes without cost or loss of miles. I see no reason to transfer to Virgin while this difference exists.

      • woggly says:

        Well, in which case, you have my humble apols for my misunderstanding. Yes, the 25% is harsh, given BAs policy. You can ask for a refund of the taxes, as, well, they are taxes. However, the bulk of the taxes is YQ, and you won’t be seeing that again! Still, much reduced, which is nice.

  • Dominic says:

    I think Raffles is (as ever!) correct to say there is good news here for those who pursue economy class redemptions. I try and use my stash of miles to fly in premium cabins, and I joined Flying Club simply to replace my BMI Amex with a Virgin Amex when BMI was subsumed into BA. I now have about 130k Virgin miles, and have done one UC flight to the States with them…. and the sad thing was that, from the point I left the Clubhouse to board the plane, I realised I don’t like Virgin. While BA is not what it once was in either Club or First, I still think its product (and the Exec Club) is miles better than Branson’s offerings, at least at the front of the plane.

    • Craig says:

      Why would you replace your BMI Amex when you now get 2 Avios per £?

      I’m not sure I would ever fully switch to Virgin, but it has its charms. Starting with the Clubhouse of course, but also the seating layout, which I much prefer to anything BA offers (apart from the upper deck on a 747). AVOD is generally better. Service is hit-and-miss on both airlines, but I do find it easier to wander to the “bar” rather than the BA “pantry” or whatever they’re calling it these days…

  • luckyjim says:

    The discrimination comment is a bit silly. All frequent flyer schemes discriminate against people who are not …erm…frequent flyers.

    • Mark says:

      Fine in itself, but I think the point is that if you’re a woman and likely to end up pregnant at any point over the next ten years then you’re missing out on the opportunity to work towards lifetime gold which is open to men of a similar age regardless of whether they elect to have children or not.

      As Raffles says, it may not be worth a great deal in any case, but it potentially has a much bigger impact than just missing out on status for the period you’re on maternity leave and shortly thereafter which would normally be the case.

      • oliuk says:

        Virgin says on their website that they are happy to make exceptions for maternity leave etc, just let them know. I dont have time to find a link right now, but have seen it on there before.

      • Rob says:

        Exactly. Making it 10 years of Gold rather than 10 consecutive years would not be difficult.

        It is bad enough that you cannot ‘freeze’ your status on maternity leave, so you are effectively resigned to losing a tier.

  • Kathy says:

    I’ve been considering whether I should switch to collecting Flying Club points . I think at the moment my collection goal is going to be for a long-haul return to LAX I’ll be able to book as a work perk in late 2015, which I’d like to take in Club class rather than economy by using Avios. For me, I think I’ll get there faster through BAEC than Flying Club, due to the oneworld partners. If I was planning on redeeming for economy to New York, as I have in the past with airmiles, I would certainly be tempted – though going the Aer Lingus Dublin route with Avios would still be cheaper than £240, although more hassle.

    • Rob says:

      Remember that Aer Lingus has just launched San Francisco – see my post last week.

      • Kathy says:

        Yeah, I saw that, but when work are paying for my flight to the west coast the taxes and fees are less of a concern! Also, from the sounds of it the BA fully-flat Club seat is going to be more comfortable for a long-haul night flight than the Aer Lingus Busines class seat is.

  • John says:

    A female colleague of mine contacted Virgin about the maternity leave a years ago. Apparently they reinstate your Gold Card after a year for those on maternity leave, subject to documentation.

    Also the mileage levels on BA are more than Virgin. The only one of your examples where the mileage is the same is Jo’burg. Other than that Virgin is less miles on all other routes.

    I received the same communication from Virgin and it says you have to earn at least 300 tier points with Virgin Atlantic in addition to the 10 years at Gold, so assume that would exclude most Centurions

    • Rob says:

      Is it? I checked Dubai and NYC when I did the post and Virgin quotes 80k for Business, same as BA.

      • John says:

        Sorry I was referring to Economy levels as I thought that was where the reduction of fuel surcharge applied.

        • Rob says:

          Apologies John, you are right and I are wrong! I checked the Business Class redemption levels out of force of habit (!) and then assumed Virgin simply charged double. And they don’t.

          So much still to learn about Flying Club ….!

  • Thunderbirds says:

    Of course the other issues to be considered (probably covered in other Raffles posts) is route network (they cover all the main destinations) and last but not least quality of service. I was 100% avios until last year when BA customer service let me down and I joined Virgin flying club as well. Looking forward to my first Virgin flights in PE (purchase E upgrade with CC voucher to PE) sometime in the next 3 months. It has been so long since I’ve flown with them (10+ years) it will be interesting to see the changes.

  • Robin says:

    I thought you were able to transfer up to 30k miles a year to another account on virgin in effect merging the points. The limit may of even gone up as it was the same limit as buying points which has increased to 100k as you mentioned.

    • Rob says:

      You can transfer miles but it costs money. 1,000 is £22, 10,000 is £90 – which (at 10k) is not much less than I’d value them at in the first place.

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