SeatSpy adds new functionality to help you book Virgin Atlantic reward seats

Virgin Atlantic’s move to dynamic reward pricing – where every seat, on every flight, is now bookable on Virgin Points as long as you have up to 700,000 points to spare – posed a challenge to SeatSpy.

SeatSpy, if you’re not already a subscriber, offers reward flight tracking. The ‘obvious’ feature when you visit their website is the ability to search for all reward availability in all classes on all dates on a route in one click – you can test it out for Economy seats on its website without paying.

The clever bit is reward alerts. You can ask SeatSpy to email or message you whenever seat(s) appear, on a specific route in a specific class(es) on specific day(s).

Just last week I was able to book Middle East flights for October half term next year following a SeatSpy alert. Someone else had booked the four guaranteed Club World seats on the dates I wanted but had then cancelled. I was delighted to jump in.

This system doesn’t work when ALL seats are available for redemption, of course. This is what SeatSpy is now doing for Virgin Atlantic reward searches:

Changes to flight searches

There is a ‘heat map’ for single cabin searches

If you search for multiple cabins, SeatSpy uses different symbols to indicate which cabins are available on a particular day. If you only search for ONE cabin, however, it doesn’t need to do that.

Instead, it now shows a ‘heat map’. This lets you instantly see which days are expensive and which are cheap(er).

If you struggle with the difference between red and green, you can swap the colour scheme.

Abililty to restrict searches to ‘Saver’ seats

Another new option, available for both single cabin and multiple cabin searches, is to restrict your results to dates with ‘Saver’ seats.

This means that you will only be shown days where rewards are priced at or below their pre-October levels.

Ability to filter results to a points level of your choice

You can also show results more granually than just ‘Saver’ or ‘all’. As you can see in the screenshot above, there is now a slider which you can use to filter the results to a points cap of your choice.

Changes to flight alerts

You can set alerts to only flag Saver seats

A similar flag is also available when setting flight alerts:

You can set alerts to email you when a flight price reduces

As you can see from the screenshot above, there is also now a box to set ‘Maximum Points’.

There are two ways you can use this:

• if you haven’t booked, you can set it to alert you if flight prices drop to a level you are prepared to pay (assuming you would pay a little more than a ‘Saver’ price but not the maximum)

• if you have ALREADY booked, you can set it to alert you if your flight price drops far enough to justify paying the £70 change fee to rebook

You’d receive a message like this:

If you are not already a SeatSpy subscriber (there is a monthly or annual fee for access to all of the features above, which covers multiple airlines including British Airways) you can find out more on their website here.

There is a 14 day free trial available which will give you a chance to try out all of the features and set up some flight alerts.

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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):

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.

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.

Small business owners should consider the two American Express Business cards. Points convert at 1:1 into Virgin Points.

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.)