Virgin Flying Club miles splitting from the airline to create a Virgin-wide loyalty scheme

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• Sam Wardill says:

  21 Aug21 August 06:10

  Is this new organisation solely focused on the UK? I’d be very interested to know if they have plans for expansion to cover Virgin Australia

  • Julian says:

    21 Aug21 August 09:48

    Does this also include Virgin Mobile, a company which I am a customer of and have tolerated for a while because it is so cheap compared to parent network EE on equivalent bundles. However this product very heavily tarnishes the Virgin brand (as also surely does or did Virgin Red) with one of the world’s very worst ever offshored call centres (in the Philippines where the staff seem to be told they have a job for life no matter how rude of offhand they are and that there is no connection between totally appalling English or very bad attitude to customers and their wage packets). They even repeatedly lie (which people seem to feel much safer doing when hardly speaking your language and working 10,000km away from the caller) that Virgin is currently building its own mobile transmitter network in the UK in response to any form of complaint about signal strength or call quality.

    Also the level of technical management at the Virgin end is so poor (or they are such a poor MVNO relation to parent network EE and not paying them enough money) that I have found myself with no data access and spending forever on the phone to be sent a new APN the last two times in the last few months that I have been to other EU countries where data roaming is supposed to be included. (although actually subject to a sneaky Fair Use policy that radically lowers the amount of data you can use compared to back in the UK). Also data use is basically disabled in other EU countries when you first arrive (phone calls and texts still always work) until you have spent days complaining, as though they are trying to circumvent the EU data roaming rules because they cost them too much.

    With avios.com just about to be closed I find it very hard to believe that Virgin is now keen to repeat exactly the same failed experiment that BA have just given up on?!!!

    • Rob says:

      21 Aug21 August 10:11

      See HFP tomorrow for more on this.

• Nigel the Pensioner says:

  21 Aug21 August 06:22

  The easier it is to earn loyalty points, the harder they are to spend AND the less their value. Watch yet another so called “airline” loyalty programme tumble as its points are offered out to masses who simply don’t use their points as they never amass enough to do anything useful with! All tis does is devalue the product for those who DO get enough miles to use on meaningful travel by virtue of their travel habits. Join a gym and fly first class return to Sydney? I don’t think so!!

• David says:

  21 Aug21 August 07:38

  I thought I read somewhere (here?), that after Aeroplan, nobody else would spin off their loyalty programme into a separate company. Is this different because it still has Virgin Group as a shareholder?

  • David says:

    21 Aug21 August 07:54

    … and the airline (Delta) that is in real terms controlling the airline. 49% direct, more via minority AF/KLM stakes, etc.
    Together Delta and Virgin Group will still on 69% of the airline directly.

    (Based upon the structure as last announced.)

• Gavin says:

  21 Aug21 August 07:48

  Any chance of being able to earn and redeem across all of Sky Team?

  • David says:

    21 Aug21 August 07:57

    While there is always a chance, it is VERY VERY small and highly unlikely right now IMO.
    No need for that to be a priority – and VS will still not become a SkyTeam member.
    Alliances are not really in vogue these days, more direct partnerships.

    • Oh Matron! says:

      21 Aug21 August 08:24

      i’d hate for Virgin to move away from the current (heavily dominated by *Alliance airlines) to SkyTeam. Singapore / Air New Zealand vs Korean Air / Aeroflot? Kinda sullies the brand somewhat

      • Gavin says:

        21 Aug21 August 09:27

        Selfishly I want to harness virgin miles to redeem on Korean Airlines!

      • Alex says:

        21 Aug21 August 09:33

        Aeroflot fleet is 4 times bigger than that of Air New Z and service you get with Aeroflot is way better than what you get with BA, at least on Lon-Mow route, both economy and business class (that probably tells more about BA service nowadays).

• Alan says:

  21 Aug21 August 08:04

  Can’t see this as a positive move. Time to cash in my miles I think before the inevitable devaluation. Shame, as I’ve been collecting them for a while and really enjoyed my economy (yes, economy!) flight to New York earlier this month.

  • Johnny Tabasco says:

    21 Aug21 August 08:16

    I wouldn’t rush into anything like that. We don’t know anything yet.
    We can’t just assume it will bad.

    • Alan says:

      21 Aug21 August 08:55

      It’s always bad. Its just the degree of badness that varies with these change announcements

      • Alex says:

        21 Aug21 August 12:07

        Semper in excretis sumus, solis profundus vareat

      • Lady London says:

        21 Aug21 August 22:32

        speak for yourself. some of us are pigs that like wallowing.

        • Rob says:

          22 Aug22 August 08:44

          I just booked 3 nights at St Regis New York for 60k Marriott which are selling for $1200 per night, so can’t argue with that!

  • TripRep says:

    21 Aug21 August 09:06

    Likely to be poor value for miles, how much was a cash ticket, be interested to see your calcs for comparison…

    • Alan says:

      21 Aug21 August 13:59

      Depends what you are comparing it to Trip Rep. We paid 55,000 miles each and £185 Taxes and fees (2xAdult 1xTeen). The VA fare for the same flights, whilst it varied, averaged about £800.

      I could have flown cheaper with a different airline, maybe, but I wasn’t looking to fly with a different airline.

      “Value” is what you want it to be. Could I have got more pence per mile by flying Upper? – almost definitely but a) I didn’t have enough miles for 3 x Upper seats and b) I didn’t want to spend the extra cash even if I had the miles. Cash is something I’m not particularly flush with but managed to get value out of my miles by actually going to New York rather than the alternative which was to not go to New York.

      • Alan says:

        21 Aug21 August 14:10

        Forgot to add that the economy experience on the A330-300 was very good. Crew were very attentive and I lost count of the number of times they came through the cabin with drinks/food. We were in 61 DF&G as this was the first row of 3 seats and there was surprisingly good legroom.

        All in all a very pleasant experience.

      • Alan says:

        21 Aug21 August 14:19

        That should have been 45000 miles not 55000. A standard Peak redemption on VS for this route would be 40000 but we paid an extra 5000 miles and flew back Delta as their Taxes/Fees were £50 per person cheaper and I’d rather have the cash than the miles.

        The Delta flight was fine but not as good as the VS one

      • Callum says:

        21 Aug21 August 21:13

        If you’re so enamoured with Virgin you wouldn’t have flown with anyone else, giving up on Flying Club seems rather bizarre?

• Mr Dee says:

  21 Aug21 August 08:08

  If they give me more option to spend then great, if not don’t see the point.

• Mikeact says:

  21 Aug21 August 08:09

  Suits me, the more competitive pressures put on the IAG group, the better.

• Oh Matron! says:

  21 Aug21 August 08:26

  This should simplify things a little. mean, how many of us already have:

  A virgin money credit card
  A virgin money ISA
  A virgin life insurance policy

  Just because of the miles? 🙂

  • Roger1* says:

    21 Aug21 August 09:41

    Well, not because of the miles, I have/have had:
    – a Virgin mobile, long since given up as poor value;
    – a virgin.net e-mail address, long since abandoned except as the receptacle for junk mail.
    🙂

    In addition to the disappearing or sleeping brands – for vodka, cola, brides etc – one problem for me has been the apparent blessing of non-core products by the addition of the Virgin logo or Branson profile, using the license for the payoff but usually without any other control.

    It will be interesting to see what Mr Swaffield makes of this, assuming he stays long enough.

  • RussellH says:

    21 Aug21 August 10:42

    I do not have any of these. I do have 2 Flying Club miles – the other 10 000 went to Hilton.

    I do consider getting a free VS credit card for the 5000 miles; combine that with 5000 Amex points and get 15 000 Hilton points, then scrap the card.

    What would be useful would be if you could use Virgin Miles for Virgin Trains, but not if it were just 0.5p per mile off a ticket. If they did that one might as well stick with Nectar on Virgin Trains and get 0.5p off at Sainsbury’s.

    The problem with this is that it seems to be entirely marketing driven. I tend to stay well away from anything that is heavily promoted, on the grounds that what you are paying for is advertising, not the product. Remember the ridiculous “les français adorent le Piat d’Or”? They did not – it was utter rubbish. Stop by a small wine producer in France, Germany or Italy and taste what he/she makes. Decent stuff for a decent price, with no middlemen or marketing burden.

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