Virgin Atlantic closes Flying Co and joins BlueBiz, the Air France, KLM and Delta SME scheme

We have written before about ‘On Business’, British Airways’ loyalty scheme, which rewards the companies that book employee travel.  Our latest overview of how On Business works is here.

Virgin Atlantic has a similar program called Flying Co, which we have never covered in detail.

And now we never will ….. because Virgin Atlantic is closing down Flying Co on 31st July.

Virgin Atlantic announced this week that it is joining the same SME loyalty scheme that Air France, KLM, Delta and Kenya Airways (!) uses, BlueBiz.

If you were previously enrolled in Flying Co you should have received an email stating that:

“any flights booked before [31st July] will still earn Flying Co miles, and any bookings with ground partners before 31st December 2019 will earn miles too, as long as travel has been completed by this date. You can continue to exchange Flying Co miles for rewards until 31st December 2020.”

This doesn’t sound too great to me.  Your Flying Co points will not be converted into BlueBiz points.  There is presumably a decent chance that you will be stuck with too few points to get a decent redemption with no way of earning any more.

What is BlueBiz?

Let’s take a look at the new scheme that Virgin Atlantic has joined, and which it wants your company to join too.

The key thing to know is that BlueBiz is not new.  Air France, KLM and Delta have been using it for some years, and it is well used by the many companies – mainly outside the M25 – who rely on Air France and KLM for long-haul travel via regional connections.

The BlueBiz scheme is explained on a stand-alone website here from where BlueBiz members can manage their account.  Ironically, despite the name, the website has been re-branded in red when you log in as a Virgin Atlantic customer.

Note – as this is a key question that always comes up – you CAN collect both Virgin Flying Club miles and Blue Credits for the same flight. If you have your own business, you can be a ‘company’ as well as a traveller and double dip.

The sign-up page for BlueBiz is here. Virgin Atlantic is not signing you up automatically even if you were previously a Flying Co member.

Signing up for BlueBiz

Unlike British Airways On Business, it does NOT appear that you need a VAT registration number to join BluzBiz.  This means that it should be open to many more companies that do not meet the VAT threshold or which operate in a VAT-exempt sector such as charities.

Once you sign up, it says that the BlueBiz sales team will contact you to ‘verify your company status’.  It is not clear what this process entails and it is not clear if you need to have a registered company, as opposed to being a sole trader, to join.

Travel agents are not eligible. You also cannot join BlueBiz if your company has a directly negotiated corporate discount although this is very unlikely for an SME.

How to earn Blue Credits

As with On Business, BlueBiz is 100% revenue based, both for earning and redeeming.  The more you spend, the more Blue Credits you earn.

You earn 2.5 Blue Credit for every £100 you spend.  Since each credit is worth exactly £1, this is a 2.5% return on your company’s spending.

You will earn Blue Credits on ‘eligible flights’.  The BlueBiz website has not been updated to reflect Virgin Atlantic joining the program, but we assume that all flights with a Virgin Atlantic, KLM, Air France, Delta or Kenya Airways flight number should be eligible.

To earn Blue Credits you must add your BlueBiz number during the online booking process, or ask your travel agent to add it to your company profile in their reservation system.

On Air France and KLM reservations it is possible to add your BlueBiz number after booking.  This functionality will presumably appear on the Virgin Atlantic website in time.

You can retroactively claim Blue Credits up to 6 months after your eligible flight.

Blue credits are valid for two years following the membership year in which they were accrued.  This is a hard expiry and there is no way to keep Blue Credits active after that, irrespective of how much activity you have on your account.

How to spend Blue Credits

You can use Blue Credits to purchase flights, upgrades or “flight-related services.” Each credit is worth exactly £1.

The snag here is that you cannot combine Blue Credits with any other form of payment. This means that you must accrue enough Blue Credits to pay for a complete ticket.

It makes the scheme far less useful than it could otherwise be.  For an Upper Class return flight from London to New York, for example, you would need approximately 3000 credits outside sale periods.  Since you earn 2.5 credits per £100 spent, you would need to spend £120,000 on eligible flights.

To put it another way:  you would get 1 free Upper Class return for every 40 Upper Class trips you or your colleagues make. This makes the program almost unworkable for small and even medium-sized companies.  I think that most Virgin Atlantic travellers will end up redeeming for KLM and Air France flights around Europe.

On the positive side, when you redeem Blue Credits there are no additional taxes or fees to pay.  Once you have enough Blue Credits to spend, your ticket is 100% paid for.

There is currently no user interface for booking Blue Credit tickets on Virgin Atlantic.  To use your credits you must contact the BlueBiz self-service centre and get a quote for your requested flights at least 5 days before departure.

Paying for upgrades and flight related services with Blue Credits are currently only possible on KLM and Air France tickets.

Is it worth it?

Fundamentally, this comes down to whether your business can drive the kinds of numbers to make BlueBiz useful.   For most people, I imagine that the credits earned from long-haul travel on Virgin Atlantic will only ever be enough to pay for short-haul flights to Paris or Amsterdam.

However, the BlueBiz website does mention additional benefits – such as increased ticket flexibility, free name changes and priority boarding in economy – may make signing up worth it.  It will take some time before we find out what small print, if any, is attached to these benefits.

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How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (April 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 15,000 Virgin Points):

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.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 40,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 40,000 Virgin Points.

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

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.)