I have had a lot of emails in recent days asking “Will Virgin Atlantic extend my Flying Club status?”.
The good news is that Virgin Atlantic has beaten British Airways to the punch and announced a comprehensive series of measures for Virgin Flying Club members.
These cover:
extensions to status years, and
extensions to credit card 2-4-1 and upgrade vouchers and any other status vouchers
Full details are on this ‘extensions’ page of the Virgin Atlantic website.
What is Virgin Atlantic doing to extend your status?
Do you have Flying Club Gold or Flying Club Silver status?
Gold members need to earn 1,000 tier points to retain their status, whilst Silver members need to earn 400 tier points.
All Gold and Silver members will have six months added to their membership year, giving them an additional six months to earn the tier points they need.
You not receive a new plastic membership card but your digital membership card inside the Virgin Atlantic app will be adjusted to show the new expiry date.
Your account will be updated online by 20th March.
Do you have a Virgin Flying Club voucher with an expiry date?
There are various types of Virgin Atlantic vouchers out there:
Gold member vouchers
Gold member companion reward for Gold status renewal
Clubhouse passes for Gold members (1,500 tier points reward)
One cabin upgrade for Gold members (2,000 tier points reward)
Credit card upgrade and 2-4-1 vouchers
Companion reward
Clubhouse passes
Premium upgrades
All vouchers which were valid as of 13th March will be extended by an additional six months.
Updated expiry dates should be visible online by Friday 20th March.
It is important to stress that these extensions will be automatically applied to your account. Please do NOT call Virgin Atlantic to discuss them as you are taking up call centre time which could be used to help someone with more pressing issues.
You can find out more on this ‘extensions’ page of the Virgin Atlantic website.
Virgin Atlantic has also launched two new bonus promotions:
Earn bonus tier points with Virgin Holidays
If you book a ‘flight and hotel’ or Virgin Holidays package before 30th April, you will earn 100 bonus tier points. These will be credited to your account by 31st May 2020.
The Virgin Holidays website is here. The Virgin Atlantic ‘flight and hotel’ site is here.
Earn bonus Flying Club miles with Virgin Atlantic
This is a good one!
You will receive 2,500 bonus Virgin Flying Club miles for each Virgin Atlantic flight sector (eg one-way flight) booked before 30th April for travel by 31st March 2021.
I value a Virgin Flying Club mile at 1p. This means that you will receive £50-worth of miles (5,000 miles) for each return flight you book. On a cheap return Economy flight this is an attractive extra return, especially as it is on top of your standard miles.
Full details of both of these offers can be found on this page of the Flying Club website.
PS. If you missed it, I also recommend our recent piece on the top 10 reasons to get the Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard credit card.
About Head for Points
I’m hoping BA thinks about the Lloyds vouchers when/if it extends its vouchers. I currently have a Lloyd’s redemption to the US, which I’ll probably need to cancel. I’m hoping I don’t lose the voucher.
Upgrading to J. But you’re right, I can’t afford my own plane, I’ve obviously been living my life wrong.
But then Warren Buffet drives a cheap Cadillac, maybe he doesn’t love his life correctly either 😉
Tut tut , are you comparing nurses to plebs. Financially we may be living it the “wrong “way but certainly we can still enjoy the high life and God so help you if you walk though my door 😉
What happens to the next status year though? Do everyone’s qualification years shift for good by 6 months? Or does activity in 6 month extension count for both this year and next. Neither Virgin nor HfP seems to have asked this obvious question… I don’t actually care about VS, but if BA copies them then it would be good to know…
I would say it’s a one off temporary extension in order to give you a chance to renew / retain status in this year. The following year I suspect you will effectively have only 6 months to retain status. I’d happily have my status year end permanently shift by 6 months but I don’t think.that will happen.
I’d suspect the opposite — they’ll move the date permanently +6 months. The alternatives are harder to explain and implement.
Date moved permanently by six months, i.e. after the 18 month ‘year’ it goes back to 12 month years
Does anyone know where abouts I can check on Flying Club’s website my 241/upgrade voucher I have and its expiry date?
og in to your flying club account on Virgin Atlantic website, check the activity feed — it shows as a line called something like Credit Card Reward Qualification (assuming it’s a credit card reward), and lasts for either 1 or 2 years from that date depending on card
From what I can see it seems to be 2 years for both cards unless I’m mistaken?
This only works if you don’t have pages of activity every month. I get daily and monthly points added and trying to scroll back through activity to find a voucher from last Feb doesn’t work, even by putting specific dates in.
Anybody able to offer an explanation what VS strategy is at the moment; it doesn’t appear that they’ve cancelled any flights to the US tomorrow and are just telling people on Twitter that they can change for free or that normal refund rules will apply. Is it just stalling and delaying the inevitable cancellation as long as possible so that they can catch a load of people out and not give full cash refunds? Rob, do you have any insider information as to when cancellations will begin?
I imagine they have a lot of US passengers to take home. No point cancelling given that it will also trigger refunds for UK passengers too.
But US citizens can’t even be re-admitted back through places like Orlando – they have to go through the funnel airports. Why keep a flight to Orlando running if nobody can travel on it?
They won’t, clearly.
I am no insider but after publicly browbeating VA on social media all weekend I have been offered a full refund for a flight to LAX departing on Wednesday, via the “SMS helpline”. Silver FC member FWIW. It *only* took 3 days of escalation. Won’t believe it until it arrives though.
Anyone know if you still have to have the Credit card to use the companion voucher? Never saw the value in it and cancelled the card due to appalling customer service. Now thinking i may trip into Gold so that voucher suddenly becomes more interesting
Don’t think you need the credit card as the voucher is on the Virgin FC account after it is transferred.
With regards to the 5000 bonus miles
I booked a flight last Wednesday, any guess to whether I will get the miles ?
T&C state
Applicable for flights booked and tickets issued between DD March 2020 – 30 April 2020.
Thanks all
I am guessing it is from last Friday when this announcement was made.