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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.

  • Mrs_Fussy says:

    I absolutely love Virgin miles, it flies to Mumbai and Delhi with 95000 in UC, which is a steal and easy to connect to Asia.

    • James says:

      That’s is good, what do the taxes and fees generally come out to ?

      So buying these purely with the intention of redeeming to there we’d be looking at £1500 for the points and then need to add taxes.

      • BJ says:

        Don’t see the point in that, £1500 rtn in miles-earning J flights is still easy to do exEurope + positioning flight. A companion voucher might change things depending on fees.

        • Erico1875 says:

          I’ve just spent 160K Avios + a 241 + £1200 on 2 flights EDI to BLR RTN so if that’s 95K RTN pp then it’s pretty good

          • BJ says:

            The OP mentioned using it to connect to Asia though which I took to mean E/SW Asia which changes things if she does. I’m not saying using India on miles plus a LCC like Indigo is a bad option for getting to Far East atm (I’m considering it myself), just that if cash fare are available at £1500 then it might be a better option. Ultimately depends on individual circumstances

      • sherlock says:

        I’m Delhi based and wish I could use these (usually a BA flyer), and the cash fares Delhi. LHR are sitting at 1K GBP return. Need to try to get an active account to then purchase the miles!

        • BJ says:

          Sorry, I meant £1500 to SE Asia not India. Have you checked fares on Finnair J to India? Before the pandemic they were excellent value. See comments on page 1 regards activating accounts to buy miles.

          • sherlockholmes says:

            (same sherlock)

            Yes re. Finnair – flew back in October for 1300GBP (and got to experience the new sky lounge, which I thought was excellent). Sadly fares increased a lot now.

      • Mrs_Fussy says:

        Sorry James – just picked this up (75K off peak), The taxes were around £500 previously but have a feeling they have gone up considerably

  • James says:

    A few examples of getting well over that 0.88p price when redeeming would have been handy.
    Redemptions on which partners seem to offer the best monetary value per point ?

  • grahaem brown says:

    You have told us that Delta makes few business seats available to partners. What about AF and the other Skyteam members? After all, it makes no sense to buy Virgin miles to use with partners if there is little availability….

    • memesweeper says:

      It’s not great, but not terrible. These things are highly route-dependent though, I’ve found it OK going from AMS or CDG to DXB, for instance. Other routes maybe not.

      Do not buy points speculatively. Make sure the availability you want is there, and ideally a fallback date if the seats go to someone else while you purchase the miles you need.

    • Rob says:

      Delta makes virtually no INTERNATIONAL business class available. Domestics are fine.

      AF/KLM is similar but easier. Virtually all seats are available for redemption but often at 1 million miles for long haul business. Virgin only sees seats priced at the lowest possible level (I think Dubai is 45k each way in Business).

      The difference between AF/KLM and Delta is that there ARE actually seats available at 45k FB miles and therefore 50k (or whatever) Virgin Points.

      I have talked to Ben Lipsey who runs Flying Blue about the image problem that showing 1 million miles for a flight brings, but apparently there are idiots out there who book them, so he’s going to continue offering them.

      • memesweeper says:

        Not necessarily the lowest FB miles only show on Virgin. Sometimes one tier above lowest shows too.

  • paul says:

    Best Option (to build points for next Upper Class UK-USA flight redemption) ??

    We fly out to LA tomorrow and can Boost our points as follows;

    2 x Boost costing £218.72 gives me 21,872 points…….but I cant see where my original points are for simply flying the route (are they zero as it is a redemption flight?)

    Is that option better than buying with the promo ?

    • paul says:

      ……and does paying 1p per point to later redeem on UC Virgin actually make sense ?

      NB I am clueless on the whole points thing other than to get best card with sign-up bonus and keep spending on it lol

      • Jonathan says:

        Don’t rely on Virgin Money accepting your applications if you repeatedly cancel then reapply for their VS credit cards…

      • Max says:

        Well you answered your own question. If you’re paying 1p via Boost that’s worse than 0.88p via the promo bonus. You won’t collect any additional point for taking that flight if it’s a redemption.

        • paul says:

          Ah but the have I ?

          The 0.88 relates to the highest purchase band, not the 22,000 I referred to.

  • DaveB says:

    Now if they run the exchange Virgin points for Virgin Cruises as they did last year I would be very interested. Is there much chance Rob?

    • Rob says:

      A couple of weeks they let US members buy the Barcelona cruises for peanuts. For some reason UK members were blocked from redeeming. I would expect this to change at some point.

  • Alex W says:

    Hey Virgin please can we have a conversion bonus from Tesco Clubcard instead/as well. Thanks!

  • Don says:

    Is it worth buying points with the bonus and using the points to fly ANA to Japan as was suggested earlier this week, or is availability so bad that it makes this option a bit of a punt?

    • Rob says:

      If you are 100% flexible on dates and its just for one person you can pull it off. Potentially easier to book one way and then come back from anywhere in the region via any miles currency you have for max flexibility.

  • paul says:

    Just had to endure the worst Upper Class seat ever on Virgins A350-1000 from LHR-LAX

    Over 11 hours of discomfort – so bad, I moved to Premium after 8hrs.

    The UC seats are rock hard as to be painful after a while.

    If you are overweight (sorry Virgin) you will struggle to open the large dining table, just about managing if you have you seat vertically upright – to them enjoy your meal sitting at an angle to it.

    Once I (and then crew) discovered the headphone, usb and 2 other switches were broken, meaning no in flight entertainment or phone charging, I decided sleep would be good.

    Again (apologies to Virgin) I am just over 6ft tall. Unlike previous UC beds, on the A350-1000 you have to slide your legs from a sitting position down into the “foot cupboard” – you need to decide if you are sleeping on your front, back, right or left because that is where your feet and ankles will be trapped; it is impossible to move if you are 6ft and occupy the full length of the coffin.

    I found it amusing (now disturbing) when advised to wear the seatbelt over the duvet in case of turbulence. Trust me, while stuck in this position Im not going anywhere (emergency?) In a hurry.

    The bed experience just wasn’t worth the discomfort.

    I sat up for a while staring at the flight screen advising how many hours I had left and couldn’t even cross my leg over my other due to the restrictive layout.

    Enough.

    I got up to see all the empty seats in Premium and advised crew of my desire to move.

    Yes, the expected apologies were given and an offer of 10,000 points for the missing in flight entertainment and I found a far more padded seat, with legroom unrestricted by cabin design, reclined my seat and managed 2 hours decent sleep.

    If I wasn’t in LA (without phone etc on cruises) I would be calling Virgin to get down graded and part refunded for my 10+ hour return flight in 2 weeks time.

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

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