If you don’t have airport lounge access via your flight ticket, your elite status, via a Priority Pass card from American Express Platinum or via a Lounge Club card from American Express Gold, your best fall-back option is usually No 1 Lounges.
No 1 Lounges is the largest network of premium independent lounges in the UK. We have reviewed all of them in the past (click for the review):
- No 1 Lounge Heathrow Terminal 3
- No 1 Lounge Gatwick North
- My Lounge Gatwick North and #2
- No 1 Clubrooms Gatwick North
- No 1 Lounge Gatwick South (photo below)
- No 1 Clubrooms Gatwick South
- No 1 Lounge Birmingham
- No 1 Lounge Edinburgh
All lounges include free hot food, free drinks (some premium food and drinks carries an extra charge), free newspapers and magazines and free wi-fi.
No 1 Lounges has a generous tie-up with Virgin Flying Club. This allows you to buy access to their lounges at a discount and earn miles Virgin Flying Club at the same time.
For a limited period, Virgin has doubled the miles you earn from No 1!
The Virgin Atlantic offer
Virgin Flying Club offers a discount and a chunk of miles when you book. You also receive fast-track security at Birmingham, Edinburgh and Gatwick.
There is a tiered earning structure, per booking:
- 800 miles at Clubrooms
- 700 miles at No 1 Lounges
- 400 miles at My Lounge
This is DOUBLE the usual number of miles. This deal is only available if you book before 30th September and visit by 31st December.
The special Virgin Flying Club pricing is:
- £25 – No 1 Lounges
- £12 – My Lounge
- £35 – Clubrooms
You can only book the Virgin deal via this page of the No 1 website.
Because the miles are awarded per booking, you should make a separate reservation for each person in your group.
If you collect Virgin Flying Club miles, this is a pretty attractive deal. Your net cost – assuming you value the miles at 1p – is just £8 for My Lounge and £18 for No 1 Lounges. Given the cost of food and drink at Gatwick North it is difficult to see how you’d struggle to get £8 of value from your My Lounge booking.
You also get Fast Track Security access at Gatwick, Birmingham and Edinburgh. Gatwick charges £5 for this if you book is separately, making this deal look even better.
How to earn Virgin Atlantic miles from UK credit cards
As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Flying Club miles from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!
Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Flying Club miles. That page is regularly updated with the latest special offers and will still be accurate even if you are reading this article months after publication.
(Want to earn more Virgin Flying Club miles? 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.)
About Head for Points
I may have made this up but with the recent VS economy changes did VS not also introduce the ability to pay for CH access at LHR?
I know you can get access if traveling through VIrgin Holidays but I could have sworn blind that you could pay for some sort of service- that included CH access- when booking directly with VS. I can’t find anything on their website so I am now thinking I made it up!
You can get clubhouse access with the new credit cards when spending £10000/£20000 a year but you need to be silver or above. Maybe that’s what you were thinking of?
You used to be able to pay for the Guest List service which included CH access and which was £240 per person. I think they’ve dropped that though – might be wrong.
Yes, got dropped.
I booked the MyLounge with two separate bookings in may and instead of receiving 2×200 miles, I got 1×350. I never chased it up as it was only 50 miles less than what I expected but is it definitely true that you’re meant to get the miles per booking of you credit to the same account?
Flying out of a terminal with one of these lounges I’d definitely use this deal if I didn’t have lounge access any other way though
It’s per booking not per account.
Therefore if there is more than one person just book iseparately per person and ensure everyone is booked in correctly at reception otherwise you won’t get the points/miles.
I did do two separate bookings, maybe they didn’t check in the second booking correctly. I got the No1 miles rather than the MyLounge ones for the one that did track so I only lost 50 points from what I should have anyway
When you say 700 miles per booking, does that mean a booking for 4 people would only mean 700 miles?
Yes. You need to make 4 bookings.
As a datapoint 2 of 3 lots of miles posted, so far. I like lgw n clubrooms, and okay value at 30 quid net.
OT.
any news on when virgin credit card bonus sign up offers will start coming in (paid and free) considering BA is so much higher at present on their avios amex PP sign up offer?
Unlikely since they don’t make any money on the cards as it is
I did this offer last time, only for the 200 miles, but they were never credited to my account. I emailed the lounge but they never replied. I am interested in doing this offer and it would be 700 miles so I would like to know they were going to arrive.
Has anyone else not had the miles? And suggestions of who to contact if I don’t get the miles for the second time?
Hi folks
I’ve made the first booking but it never asked for my Virgin a/c number? Are they matching emails or something?