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Good £1,175 US business class deals in the Virgin Atlantic sale

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We covered the current British Airways sale last week, but we haven’t mentioned Virgin Atlantic’s response yet.

The sale home page is here. You can book until 22nd June for travel up to 331 days in advance.

Unfortunately, Virgin Atlantic has not provided us with a list of headline Upper Class fares so you will need to dig around.

Virgin Atlantic tail fin

There is, for example, is a £1,175 return Upper Class fare to San Francisco for November.

You can route this, for the same price, via any of Virgin’s transatlantic joint venture partners. This means that you can also fly on Delta Air Lines via a plane change in the US, or on Air France via Paris or KLM via Amsterdam. The latter two would earn additional tier points due to the connecting flights.

Virgin Atlantic has stated that the best deals are to Miami, Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Hong Kong and Antigua.

There are also deals out there to North American cities served only by Delta. I got San Diego to price up at £1,254 return in Business Class in December, for example. One tier point busting routing sent you via Amsterdam and Minneapolis on a mix of KLM and Delta.

Most tickets can be changed to a new date with no change fees if necessary, although you will need to pay any fare difference.

Have a look at your options on the sale website here.


How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards

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):

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

A generous earning rate for a free card at 0.75 points per £1 Read our full review

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.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

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

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

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

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

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.)

Comments (24)

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

  • Andy Frew says:

    Has anyone been able to work out Upper Class sales fares for South African destinations? Any help would be much appreciated! I was looking for Feb ’22

  • John Molloy says:

    Saw your piece about Virgin Sale andany Upper Class ticket on any date in November LHR-SFO return is coming up at £3700 which is a long way off the £1175 you have quoted?Am I looking in wrong place???

    • Rob says:

      Fares seem to have been pulled early. Upper deals were never heard officially advertised.

  • Andy Frew says:

    Is anyone aware if there is a pattern to when Virgin release reward seats? Particularly Upper Class for travel in Feb ’22, to South Africa! Thanks folks

    • WaynedP says:

      Wish I could help, Andy, but I’m not sure there is any reliable pattern for SA these days.

      SA’s borders were closed to all air travel for nearly 8 months last year, so no airlines were offering any sales to SA that they otherwise might have offered from March to end October 2020.

      I despair at getting back there to attend to family matters because SA has entered a third wave and I expect the SA govt to impose Alert Level 3 within the next 2-3 weeks, which may again come with some international travel bans.

      The situation is grim there, I lost another cousin of my age (early fifties) to Covid there last week, and it’s not impossible that the country might act as a petri dish for another variant given that the beta variant is already widespread and the gamma variant seems to be spreading. And less than 3% of the population is vaccinated.

      If international air travel is stopped by the SA govt again, I fear it won’t open again for a long time, not Christmas 2021, maybe Easter 2022 🙁

      • Andy Frew says:

        Hey Wayne I’m sorry to hear about your situation and what’s going on in SA. I feel bad for talking about luxury travel to a destination which is suffering so bad from an epidemic!
        I do hope the world gets together and realises we all have to work together to overcome the virus rather than just their own countries. I hope you get back there soon to see your family!

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

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