Mistake or madness? Virgin Flying Club adds £200+ to USA Upper Class flight surcharges

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• Matthew says:

  13 Apr13 April 09:05

  Vote with your feet. I never fly long haul with airlines that charge crazy YQ. Only ever fly BA as RFS and done one UC VS flight ex HKG. The rest are with airlines like SQ with Krisflyer, CX with AA miles or Etihad via AA miles (no YQ) which offers way better value than Avios even with 2 for 1 voucher.

  • Matthew says:

    13 Apr13 April 09:05

    CX with AS miles I mean!

  • Pangolin says:

    13 Apr13 April 19:14

    +1

• Mark Roscoe says:

  13 Apr13 April 09:07

  I now have enough miles for an upper class reward flight from Man to Las Vegas. I had always assumed that I could only use Virgin rewards on a Virgin flight, is this correct? If my rewards can be used on Delta, how do I go about making the booking?

  • Rob says:

    13 Apr13 April 09:29

    Virgin website shows Delta options as well as Virgin options.

    • Gareth Morgan says:

      13 Apr13 April 10:02

      Can the Virgin credit card companion voucher be used on non Virgin metal?

  • Lady London says:

    13 Apr13 April 10:23

    And just for info Virgin miles can be used on some other interesting partner airlines.

    Lots of people also are waiting for the expected ability to earn and burn VS miles on KLM and Air France and/or Flying Blue airlines in general. However I will wait till I see this as except for special offers those Airlines seem to require an outageously Hugh number of miles for any redemption flight at all.

• Lsr161 says:

  13 Apr13 April 09:26

  That’s funny you should bring this up this morning as I bought 2 miles tickets to Miami to go out P/ec and back upper on Thursday and I had an upgrade and the tax was £564. I queried it as it was the the same price with or without the upgrade and the agent said it was the same ! I bought he same ticket in January and paid £417.00. Maybe I should have paid the part of the journey ?? I love virgin but that price hike is a bit excessive and the site kept telling me that you could not redeem miles seats on that route didn’t matter when you were trying to fly in the year so I think they may have a glitch !
  Any thoughts

• Hardik Makkar says:

  13 Apr13 April 09:55

  Good airline but the most terrible reward scheme in the whole world. Highest taxes n lowest availability

• TripRep says:

  13 Apr13 April 10:08

  Rob – thanks for addressing the significant Miles devaluation. (Because lets call it out for what it is.)

  YQ surcharges on redemptions have been rising over the years with no justification, they cannot link it to > $100 Oil for instance. How much is YQ on a cash fare ?

  I’d appreciate a further in depth look at this poor attempt at a stealth increase and include BA in that aswell.

  • Russ says:

    13 Apr13 April 11:11

    Surely you can do that yourself Trip?

• TripRep says:

  13 Apr13 April 10:17

  here’s the OMAAT article
  https://onemileatatime.com/airline-fuel-surcharges/

• Lady London says:

  13 Apr13 April 10:27

  Yes. I call YQ etc. the “Carrier Greed” surcharge.

  • Anna says:

    13 Apr13 April 10:40

    Indeed, redemption flights are fast becoming only worthwhile when cash prices are very high – so still valuable for me in the school holidays. I recently used my “extra” Lloyd’s upgrade voucher for RFS for my sister and me to Vienna at the beginning of December. This week I booked the return leg from Vienna to MAN on EasyJet and for both of us it cost €108, including seat selection and a checked bag. Talk about a different world…

    • Lady London says:

      13 Apr13 April 16:27

      The problem is that if it only becomes worth spending miles for flights at peak periods then as the supply is limited most miles collectors will lose out.

      The other time miles van be worth having in stock is in case you have to travel at short notice. Airlines seem to really overprice tickets booked at short notice. Even if the plane’s nowhere near full. In this case ( and provided it’s not a peak time flight you need) having air miles available can really save your bacon. Other than that the swingeing Carrier Greed increases in the money they require to let you use thr miles you paid for, for a ticket that British Airways has snuck in recently and now Virgin, leave a really bad taste in the mouth. Loyalty is, for most of us, mostly one way.

      • Doug M says:

        13 Apr13 April 16:58

        I have no loyalty whatsoever to a series of large corporations. I do what’s best for me. Loyalty to a corporation is a very strange concept.

• TripRep says:

  13 Apr13 April 10:38

  Just tried a dummy booking for MAN-MCO off peak 70k miles and £608rtn

  Appears the website fails to go to “Next Step” after selecting the dates and direct VS flights you’re interested in.

  i wonder (hope) if they are correcting things?

  “There are no seats found for your search. You might have better luck looking for two one way seats or by changing your dates. #101767A”

  Also try searching UC for LHR-MIA in November I get the following error…

  “This route is not eligible for miles or miles plus money payment.”

  Very bizarre.

  Crawley Towers IT dept busy again?

  • Lsr161 says:

    14 Apr14 April 00:53

    I had that last week and the guy at virgin said he could see all availability and he could book ! Very strange indeed!

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