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Get a 70% bonus buying Virgin Points

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Virgin Flying Club is currently running a repeat of its biggest ever deal for buying Virgin Points – see here. The offer runs until 31st March.

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.

This time, unlike in previous promotions, the bonus depends on how many points you buy.

Get a 70% bonus buying Virgin Points

The maximum bonus is 70%, but you need to buy at least 125,000 points to get this. Here is the breakdown:

  • 5,000 – 20,000 points = 20% bonus  
  • 25,000 – 60,000 points = 30% bonus  
  • 70,000 – 100,000 points = 50% bonus  
  • 125,000 – 200,000 points = 70% bonus 

The maximum number of points you can buy is 200,000, which is double the normal annual cap.

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.

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. That said, as always, we don’t recommend buying speculatively.

Don’t forget …. Virgin Atlantic joined the SkyTeam airline alliance last week. This has opened up redemptions across new partners such as Aeromexico, Czech Airlines, Garuda Indonesia, Korean Air and Vietnam Airlines. This article explains what it costs to redeem Virgin Points on the new SkyTeam partners.

The link to buy points is here.

If you want to earn more Virgin Points, our review of the Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard credit card is here (15,000 bonus points) and our review of the free Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard credit card is 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 (49)

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

  • Go197 says:

    Remember the Radisson

  • ZoeB says:

    Currently in the Song Hong lounge at HAN excited that the connection to Vietnam Airlines means there’s another good way to get here. The lounge features gold sinks in the Ladies as well as wash & blow dry toilets. Didn’t notice any champagne but the food is great.

    • Cousin Greg says:

      Either your standards are very low or the lounge had a complete culinery overhaul.

  • AbuCordoba says:

    I tried to buy points but said I need to have earned or spent miles first! does anyone advise the best and easiest way to earn miles without flying or do you need to fly first? (obviously I cant spend miles I don’t have!)

    • memesweeper says:

      Transfer from Amex or Marriott?

    • BJ says:

      Have a look on the Virgin Red website or app to see earning options that might suit you. However, unless you plan to book a flight imminently you would be best advised to heed the advice in the article not to buy speculatively, it is very sound.

  • BJ says:

    Does anybody with a good working knowledge of FlyingBlue know how this offer compares to the 100% FlyingBlue bonus when factoring in differences between the FB and VS award charts? Specific interest being to redeem FB or FC miles to SE Asia.

    • Jan M says:

      FB does dynamic pricing. Only used Virgin and FB points to book within Europe but have almost always used less Virgin than FB points.

      • BJ says:

        That was my gut feeling but was thinking it might be six and half a dozern in practice if reward seats on AF/KLM available to Virgin may simply reflect those available only at lower pricing levels to FB. I have not checked since the pandemic but back about 2019 FB pricing to SE Asia was never attractive unless included in the promo awards.

        • memesweeper says:

          If you can live with reduced availability my experience has been Virgin is the better way to book FB. That’s based on very limited number of bookings: one short and two long sectors last year and two short this year. I use both schemes, large balance with Virgin, top up FB as required from Amex.

          • BJ says:

            I did my first AF booking using FC miles recently and was very happy with it. Got CDG-BCN in J on a Friday night for 8k + £40 pp on a day standard rail fares were £159pp and basic air fares over £100 each even on low cost carriers. I used to convert FC to Hilton by default having little interest in their route network and no exEDI departures but now I think maintain a pot might be useful for AF/KLM short haul. Associated fees can be higher or around the same as cheapest budget fares but at times like my flight above it can pay off.

        • Novice says:

          I am currently touring and flew KLM business first time. Soft product is good but can’t say anything good about the hard product which is important on a longhaul flight. Klm use a dated product. They are like how everything used to be or maybe I’m just spoilt expecting decent biz class.

          Not really looking forward to the flight bk tbh.

  • Duck Ling says:

    It’s worth mentioning that you cannot set up a Flying Club account and buy points.

    This is the official line on it:

    ‘Before you can Buy Miles, you must have made at least one Flying Club Earning or Spending transaction.’

    • Rob says:

      Not sure I knew that!

    • Grimz says:

      BJ, Do you search Virgin for AF rewards seats with FC points? I have around 400k virgin points and would use them on short haul in Europe.

  • Yorkieflyer says:

    I guess a Points booster bonus will be due soon?

    • JohnTh says:

      If only they would..! Nearly at 6 months since last flight so may have to go for it soon without any bonus..

    • AspirationalFlyer says:

      That would be good!
      Not interested in buying miles but would do that!

    • Bob says:

      Hopefully! I think they last ran it around this time last year or a little later?

  • Roger W says:

    Now if they run the exchange Virgin points for Virgin Cruises as they did last year I would be very interested. Never been lucky with flights☹️

  • Ian S says:

    “if you only qualify for the 60% bonus..” – but the table jumps from 50% to 70% – which is correct?

    • Rob says:

      Apologies. That line is a hangover from a previous offer when different people got different bonuses. Everyone gets 70% this time.

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

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