Get up to 70% extra when you buy Virgin Points – worth it?

Virgin Flying Club is currently running a repeat of its biggest ever deal for buying Virgin Points – see here.

The maximum bonus is 70%, but you need to have Silver or Gold status in Virgin Flying Club to get this. To put this in perspective, before 2020 Virgin Atlantic had never even run a 50% bonus. 15% to 30% was the best you could expect. 50% was big but the current 70% is huge.

For those without any status in Virgin Flying Club, the bonus is 60%.

The link to buy points is here.

The closing date for the bonus is 11th March.

The bonus is staggered and is based on whether you have Silver or Gold status or not:

• 15% or 20% bonus when you buy 5,000 – 24,000 points
• 20% or 30% bonus when you buy 25,000 – 69,000 points
• 40% or 50% bonus when you buy 70,000 – 119,000 points
• 60% or 70% bonus when you buy 120,000 – 200,000 points

At the top end, 200,000 Virgin Points, which comes to 340,000 points with the 70% bonus, will cost you £3,000.  This works out at 0.88p each. If you only qualify for the 60% bonus, you are paying 0.94p each.

0.88p is exceptionally cheap for a direct miles purchase. Most Virgin Atlantic commercial partners will be paying the airline more than 0.88p for their miles.

What sort of deals can you get with 0.88p miles?

The issue with Virgin Points is that there are virtually no short haul opportunities to spend them. The best deals are long haul Business Class flights across the Virgin Atlantic network, and of course the route network is limited.

Availability, apart from New York, is also pretty tight at present in Upper Class, although this should pass. You should definitely do a search for availability on your preferred routes before buying if you have a specific trip in mind.

You can see the Virgin Atlantic reward chart on this page of their website.

Unsurprisingly, the numbers are not dissimilar to the Avios chart and you will find that taxes and charges are also very similar.

There is no point paying 0.88p per point unless you want premium cabin flights.

The Virgin Red app (download here) has a huge number of interesting redemptions but they are almost all based on giving you 0.5p per point. Similarly, using your Virgin Points to part-pay for a cash Virgin Atlantic flight or a Virgin Holiday will get you around 0.55p as we show here. This isn’t any good if you paid 0.88p for them.

There are great deals with partners

Here is the upside:

• The fact that you can now book Air France and KLM flights with Virgin Points is HUGE. Suddenly, parts of the world which were not available to you because of the limited Virgin Atlantic network are bookable. Our in-depth look at redeeming Virgin Points on Air France and KLM is here.

• ANA remains, by far, the best value partner redemption. This article explains how to book ANA’s amazing business class seat to Tokyo for just 95,000 Virgin Points return, or for 120,000 points in First Class.

• There is astonishing value in Delta redemptions from the US to Continental Europe, because the one way taxes are just £4 as we explain here

Don’t forget the 2-4-1 voucher with the Virgin Atlantic credit cards

If you do choose to buy points, remember that you receive 15,000 Virgin Points with the £160 Virgin Atlantic Reward+ credit card.  You may prefer to do this than buying another 15,000 points. 

Our full review of the Virgin Atlantic Reward+ credit card is here. This article also gives you an overview of how the 2-4-1 voucher issued by the Virgin credit cards works. Buying points for 0.88p and redeeming them with a Virgin Atlantic 2-4-1 voucher would offer excellent value.

You can also convert American Express Membership Rewards points into Virgin Points:

The link to buy Virgin Points is here.