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Get a 70% bonus when you buy Virgin Points – worth it?

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Virgin Atlantic has brought back its biggest ever deal for buying Virgin Points.

This new 70% bonus offer runs until 12th October.

If you are short of points for your next redemption, now is as good a time as any to top up. This deal matches the highest bonus offer we have seen.

Get a 70% bonus when you buy Virgin Points

The bonus depends on how many points you buy:

  • 5,000 to 24,000 points – 20% bonus
  • 25,000 to 69,000 points – 40% bonus
  • 70,000 to 124,000 points – 60% bonus
  • 125,000 to 200,000 points – 70% bonus

The maximum number of points you can buy is 200,000. Since the beginning of 2025, this is the new maximum you can buy in a calendar year.

It costs £15 per 1,000 points, with the bonus added on top.

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.

Of course, since Virgin Atlantic adopted dynamic pricing for its rewards, it has become trickier to get value from Upper Class redemptions.

As our recent analysis shows, there are excellent deals to be had to New York, Boston, Orlando, Atlanta and Washington in Upper Class at the moment.

However, on certain routes (Cancun, Maldives, Cape Town, Johannesburg) you can forget Upper Class because Saver seats are virtually never available. The cost of Dubai flights has also gone through the roof since the aircraft was swapped for one with a smaller Upper Class cabin.

Of course, you are not restricted to redeeming Virgin Points on Virgin Atlantic.

Virgin Atlantic is a member of the SkyTeam airline alliance. This allows redemptions across partners such as Aeromexico, Air France, China Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Garuda Indonesia, KLM, Korean Air, SAS and Vietnam Airlines.  This article from our ‘Virgin Redemption University’ series explains what it costs to redeem Virgin Points on SkyTeam partners.

You may also find value in top events at The O2, watching from the Virgin Red Room suite. Gladiators, Richard Ashcroft, Lorde and Five are among the artists available at 50,000 points for two people, with Laver Cup tickets for 2026 and Jason Derulo at 60,000 points. John Bishop and Darius Rucker are among the artists at 40,000 points for two suite tickets. John Summit is available for just 20,000 points for two for 13th September.

The link to buy points is here.

The 70% bonus offer runs to 12th October.

Comments (10)

  • ed_fly says:

    Has anyone had recent experience of buying virgin points with a bonus running? Just wondering how soon the points, including bonus, landed in your account? Thanks

    • Travel Strong says:

      Not instant. Been about 18m since I last needed to do it, and it probably took around 48hrs.

      If you need instant points, Amex MR are an option – but call Amex to do the transfer, do not rely on the website as this is known to cause issues on first time transfers.

    • SP181 says:

      Took under 5 minutes for my purchase this morning.

  • maehara says:

    Bought a bundle with the last offer back in June, was instant on that purchase. But suspect it may vary depending on how stressed Virgin’s IT is at the time…

  • CJD says:

    There is of course plenty of value to be had if you can countenance slumming it in Premium Economy for a day flight to the East Coast; understandably Rob doesn’t promote this as it might risk him coming into contact with someone who isn’t in the 45% tax bracket.

    • Sandgrounder says:

      I have always thought that for most readers this site was about getting something you couldn’t usually afford or weren’t prepared to pay for at a reasonable price, rather than getting something you usually use anyway for a bit less.
      I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve booked a return to Boston from MAN during next year’s school holidays in Economy. It’s 60k plus £100 vs £1183, a good use of points I think, especially given that I bought 3/4 of them using Boost, but the stuff dreams are made of? Nah not really.

      • ed_fly says:

        I think these virgin points sales provide a great opportunity to compare cash rates, in any class, with what it would cost to buy points outright. Which is behind my question above, some flights I’m considering for next summer school holidays are likely to be cheaper in economy / PE by buying all the points required rather than paying cash. Just got to decide how much I’m willing to gamble the points dynamically jumping between paying for the points and securing the seats. I also use points for J/F seats i wouldn’t otherwise pay for.

        • Sandgrounder says:

          I haven’t bought Virgin for a while unfortunately, but they did take a little while to appear as reported above. I can’t remember how long, but I do remember sweating a little bit waiting for them to arrive.

  • memesweeper says:

    Just done a check for a friend on a peak time West Coast redemption, both PE and Upper. Both come out with the redemption options as somewhat over 1p/mile. Not life changing, but if you want to save a few bob this option to buy might work for you.

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