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Virgin Atlantic extends Virgin Flying Club status and vouchers – for the fifth time

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Virgin Atlantic has announced a further set of status extensions for Flying Club members.

If you have Gold or Silver status with Virgin, you will see an additional SIX months of status has been applied to your account.

(If you don’t see it yet, give it 24 hours. Do not call Virgin Atlantic.)

This is the fifth extension that members have received to date, and means that members who held status in March 2020 will have seen a total extension of 24 months.

All outstanding Clubhouse, upgrade and 2-4-1 vouchers have also been extended by a further six months.

It’s not clear if Virgin Atlantic sees this as a final extension or not. Even if long-haul travel to the USA opens up in the next few months, both Virgin Atlantic and British Airways face a more fundamental problem.

Current status programmes are based on generating a certain number of members at each tier in order to control benefits such as lounge access.

Unless there are medium term changes to how the loyalty programmes operate – such as permanent cuts in tier point requirements – the airlines will soon start to haemorrhage status members as they fail to requalify. BA’s 25% cut in tier point requirements is unlikely to be enough to keep the tier numbers where they should be, and alienating current status members will be the last thing that anyone wants to do.


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 (62)

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

  • Babyg says:

    hmm I don’t see an extension “earn an additional 1,000 tier points by 31 August 2022”..

    • Andrew says:

      +1. Not seeing the extension yet. Perhaps it’s being done in batches today.

  • roberto says:

    Re status expiry date – Does it even show on the app?

    • Tom says:

      Doesn’t show on the app i don’t think.

      +1 my expiry hasn’t been extended yet either.

      • Babyg says:

        i did do a status match, maybe its not for status match people..

        • Andrew says:

          The previous extensions have been for status matches, and the concept is the same – few opportunities to use the status we’ve been offered to try, which would make the campaign quite pointless.

          • Babyg says:

            apparently TAP extended status for everybody (except those who had done a status match)… fingers crossed, +6months would be grand, my next virgin flight isnt till feb at this stage… this would definitely see me fly PE more if my gold (aka lounge access) status lasted abit longer

  • AL says:

    This is good news! As you say, lower TP requirements will be needed longer term. I became VS Gold in February 2020… haven’t yet been able to use any perks! 😢

    • GM says:

      Got Silver in March 2020! Had so many flights booked and hoped to make Gold. Really hope this isn’t the last extension. I have a flight booked to NYC on September 22nd which should have been April and needs to be bumped again. Not my choice! Work in job that makes just following green list very difficult.

      Also wondering what to do with open ticket for another one. They’ve offered voucher, which sounds better. But maybe there’s a catch? Like if they go under or something…

  • Andrew says:

    Hopefully BA are reading this and will give those early 2022 expiries an extension as they did with late 2021 expires.

  • OP says:

    Just to check, there’s no way to find out voucher expiry without calling is there? And do I call Virgin Atlantic or Virgin Money?

    • Reney says:

      I whatsapp virgin atlantic, specifically asking how many voucher I had and their expiry date. Got a respond in about a day.

  • Reney says:

    I’m sitting on several vouchers across BA and VS, by the time places I want to use them on open up, I’m not sure I would find any availabilities…

  • Cal says:

    If my voucher is frozen inside a booking will it’s expiry also be extended? It was an upper class booking to SEA during VS’s half price reward sale so not really sure where I stand with it.

    • Mark says:

      I would imagine it will be. Virgin’s booking team told me via WhatsApp they wouldn’t honour the reward sale terms on a rebooking even though they cancelled the originally booked flights. A conversation with a very helpful lady in their Executive Office fixed that, but one to be aware if you’re assuming they will let you rebook with an additional points requirement.

    • Alan says:

      I had one of those, was due to travel in June – they confirmed that as they cancelled the flight I could just pick another within the next year and they’d honour it (ie no extra cash or miles required).

  • ChasP says:

    there are an awful lot of VS vouchers out there – I have 3 – using them will be a problem unless more availability opens up
    If lots of people fail to requalify then BA will get more money from their exorbitant seat booking fees. Apart from pissing people off (and thats only a problem if they can go elsewhere) dont see that much of a downside

    • Alan says:

      For those not based in London then going elsewhere (KLM, QR, etc) isn’t a big hassle given we’d have to connect anyway.

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