Virgin Flying Club dynamic pricing in Upper Class: our analysis (Part 1)
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It’s just over a week since Virgin Flying Club moved to dynamic pricing on Virgin Points redemptions.
Now that the transition has had time to bed in, we thought we’d take a look at how redemption pricing has changed for Virgin Atlantic flights.
To give credit where it is due, Virgin Flying Club has built a very handy tool for finding Saver pricing. Called Reward Seat Checker, you can see pricing and availability for every route month-by-month. Saver fares are meant to be marked with a red tag but the IT is buggy.
We used this tool to look at the impact of the changes on Virgin Flying Club redemptions in Upper Class.
We have assumed that you have no interest in redeeming for dynamically priced ‘any seat’ rewards and are only interested in ‘Saver’ seats which are priced at no more than the ‘old’ reward prices. ‘Dynamic’ seats in Upper Class cost up to 700,000 Virgin Points + £1,000 of taxes and charges return.
For simplicity we only looked at departures from London Heathrow.
The work was done before the rumours of the cancellation of Accra and Tel Aviv were reported. We may get some clarity on this story during Monday.
We believe this data to be correct but errors could have crept in, so please double-check what we say. ‘Dynamic pricing’ also means that what was correct last Thursday may not still be correct today.
The results, in summary
We’ll show you the data in a minute, but let me summarise it for you:
Forget Virgin Points if you want to fly Upper Class at short notice
Only four routes have ANY flights with an Upper Class Saver seat between 8th and 30th November:
- Boston (1 day)
- Orlando (4 days)
- Tampa (2 days)
- Washington DC (4 days)
This is shocking. 24 routes do not have a single Upper Class Saver seat available on any flight on any day between 8th and 30th November.
New York JFK, with multiple flights per day, doesn’t have a single Upper Class Saver seat on any day between 8th and 30th November 2024.
For Upper Class, you should probably only collect Virgin Points if you want to fly to:
- Accra
- New York
- Washington
- Bangalore
- Boston
- Mumbai
- Riyadh
All other routes have NO Saver seats in Upper Class on at least 66% of dates where there is a flight.
Forget Virgin Points if you want to fly Upper Class to Canada, Dubai, the Caribbean, Maldives or South Africa
The routes below have fewer than 25 days OUT OF THE NEXT 331 DAYS where you can get an Upper Class Saver seat outbound:
- Antigua
- Barbados
- Cape Town*
- Dubai*
- Grenada
- Johannesburg
- Las Vegas
- Los Angeles
- Male / Maldives*
- Nassau / Bahamas*
- St Lucia*
- St Vincent & The Grenadines
- Toronto*
- Trinidad & Tobago*
- Turks & Caicos
Routes marked with a ‘*’ do not operate all year, but it is still worrying to see fewer than 25 days with Upper Class Saver seats.
Forget Upper Class if you want to fly in August with your children on Virgin Points to these places:
The following routes have NO outbound Upper Class Saver seats, at all, in August 2025:
- Antigua
- Barbados
- Grenada
- Las Vegas
- Los Angeles
- St Vincent & The Grenadines
- Toronto
- Turks & Caicos
There are seven days or fewer in August 2025 with an Upper Class Saver seat to Miami, Montego Bay, Orlando and Tampa.
On the positive side, there are 14 Virgin Atlantic routes which have 10+ days in August 2025 with Upper Class Saver seats.
The reality is that we have sugar-coated the results above
This is because:
- we don’t know how many Upper Class Saver seats are available on a particular date. If you are travelling with someone else and need two seats, you will have fewer options than we highlight above. If you travelling as a family, it will be even worse.
- we are only looking at outbound flights from Heathrow. If a route only has a handful of Saver dates flying out, the chance of you finding a return flight on a suitable date is slim.
With that said, let’s move on to the data.
Where and when can you find Upper Class Saver availability?
The chart below lists all 32 Virgin Atlantic routes together with the numbers of days each month where outbound Upper Class Saver seats are available.
If you have children, you need to look at April and August to see where you could go in Upper Class during the Easter and summer school holidays. However, let me caveat that – our analysis is based on days with ONE Upper Class Saver seat. There are not necessarily two, three, four or more available.
The number of dates shown for seasonal routes is arguably inflated. There are often seats in the final days before flights cease, but passengers have no way of getting back on Virgin Atlantic. All 16 dates with Dubai availability, for example, are in March and services end on 28th March.
Cancun is excluded because seats are not bookable until later this month. The first flight is 19th October 2025.
What does the table below show?
- We list all 32 routes alphabetically
- Across the top are columns for the next 11 months, starting with November 2024 and ending with September 2025. Data for October 2025 is not available because of the 11 month booking window.
- For each route we show the number of days where at least one Upper Class Saver seat is bookable FROM Heathrow
- Our analysis only looks at OUTBOUND seats and not inbound
- A blank space means that flights do not operate that month. A zero means that flights are operating but that no Upper Class Saver seats are available.
- This data was correct as of 7th November. Seat numbers for November 2024 are for dates from 8th November.
| N | D | J | F | M | A | M | J | J | A | S | Total | |
| Accra | 26 | 26 | 31 | 29 | 25 | 140 | ||||||
| Antigua | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Atlanta | 0 | 8 | 22 | 26 | 19 | 11 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 12 | 6 | 111 |
| Bangalore | 0 | 3 | 10 | 15 | 21 | 21 | 22 | 19 | 20 | 25 | 18 | 177 |
| Barbados | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 18 |
| Boston | 1 | 8 | 23 | 26 | 19 | 20 | 28 | 30 | 9 | 20 | 5 | 190 |
| Cape Town | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 7 | |||||
| Delhi | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 17 | 1 | 6 | 26 | 16 | 83 |
| Dubai | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 16 | ||||||
| Grenada | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jo’burg | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 19 |
| Lagos | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 15 | 17 | 17 | 23 | 17 | 16 | 108 |
| Las Vegas | 0 | 6 | 11 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 21 |
| Los Angeles | 0 | 0 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 21 |
| Male | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 7 | |||||
| Miami | 0 | 2 | 10 | 12 | 18 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 7 | 7 | 63 |
| Montego Bay | 0 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 24 |
| Mumbai | 0 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 23 | 22 | 22 | 16 | 11 | 31 | 23 | 165 |
| Nassau | 0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 5 | |||||||
| New York JFK | 0 | 8 | 26 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 31 | 30 | 15 | 29 | 14 | 238 |
| Orlando | 4 | 2 | 14 | 10 | 20 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 4 | 7 | 3 | 72 |
| Riyadh | 2 | 12 | 7 | 15 | 28 | 14 | 11 | 92 | ||||
| San Francisco | 0 | 2 | 7 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 1 | 30 |
| Seattle | 0 | 7 | 12 | 23 | 23 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 87 |
| St Lucia | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 11 | ||||||
| St Vin / Grenadines | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Tampa | 2 | 4 | 23 | 27 | 24 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 7 | 3 | 101 |
| Tel Aviv | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 17 | 22 | 16 | 62 | ||||
| Toronto | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | ||||
| Trinidad & Tobago | 0 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 9 | |||||||
| Turks & Caicos | 0 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 |
| Washington DC | 4 | 18 | 22 | 23 | 31 | 28 | 26 | 28 | 1 | 21 | 17 | 222 |
In Part 2 tomorrow ….
In the second part of this article, published tomorrow, we will dig into the Upper Class reward seat data in more detail.
How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (December 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 18,000 Virgin Points and the free card has a bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points):
Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard
18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review
Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard
3,000 bonus points, no fee and 1 point for every £1 you spend 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.
SPECIAL OFFER: Until 14th January 2025, the sign-up bonus on ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is increased to 30,000 Membership Rewards points. This converts into 30,000 Virgin Points. Click here to apply.
American Express Preferred Rewards Gold
Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review
The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 50,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 50,000 Virgin Points.
SPECIAL OFFER: Until 14th January 2025, the sign-up bonus on The Platinum Card from American Express is increased to 80,000 Membership Rewards points. This converts into 80,000 Virgin Points! The spend requirement is changed to £10,000 in six months for this offer. Click here to apply.
The Platinum Card from American Express
Huge 80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large 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
50,000 points when you sign-up 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.)
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