How many Virgin Points do you need to fly to ….? (Virgin Redemption University #2)

How many Virgin Points do you need to fly to a particular city?

This article is Part 2 of our updated ‘Virgin Redemption University’ series. Further articles will follow on different aspects of spending Virgin Points.

If you want to earn more Virgin Points, our review of the Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard credit card is here (18,000 bonus points) and our review of the free Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard credit card is here (3,000 points bonus).

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 13th October 2025, the sign-up bonus on the Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard is doubled to 36,000 Virgin Points. You need to spend £3,000 within three months. Existing holders of the free card qualify. T&C apply. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 13th October 2025, the sign-up bonus on the free Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard is doubled to 6,000 Virgin Points. You need to spend £1,000 within three months. Existing holders of the paid card qualify. T&C apply. Click here to apply.

Before we look at how to redeem Virgin Points for flights (Part 3 and Part 4 of this series), we want to look at the way that Virgin Atlantic is now pricing reward flights on its own aircraft.

Taxes and charges are mentioned briefly but will be covered in more detail in a future article.

We will look at how to work out upgrade pricing in a future article.

This article does not look at flights on partner airlines

Virgin Atlantic retains formal pricing charts (eg ‘a flight of x,000 miles is y,000 Virgin Points) for flights on SkyTeam and non-alliance airline partners.

We will look at these redemption options in a future article.

How many Virgin Points are Virgin Atlantic reward flights?

The simple answer …. you won’t know until you check.

In October 2024, Virgin Atlantic introduced ‘dynamic pricing’ for its reward flights.

This tore up the rule book when it comes to pricing points flights:

• there is no longer a separation between seats available for cash and seats available for rewards – today, every cash seat can be booked as a reward seat

• there is no reward chart – instead, the points price of a redemption seat is very loosely based on the current cash price

• taxes and charges are still due, but are not fixed – the lower the points price, the lower the surcharges will be (and vice versa)

Before dynamic pricing, Virgin Atlantic used to guarantee a fixed number of reward seats on every flight. More seats would be added as time went on if a flight was selling poorly.

This has been replaced by a system which makes all seats available for points redemptions, but often at a price no-one is willing to pay.

There would have been two ways of introducing dynamic pricing:

• keep the ‘guaranteed’ seats on every flight, sold at the ‘old’ points prices, but add the ability to book additional seats via a dynamically priced model

• remove ‘guaranteed’ seats and sell all seats via a dynamically priced model

Virgin Atlantic opted for the second model, with what many see as disastrous results.

How can I see reward pricing?

Virgin Atlantic introduced a tool called ‘Reward Seat Checker‘ on its website. This lets you see a summary of the cheapest flight per cabin per day per route. You can find it here.

It is not perfectly accurate because points prices are constantly moving but ‘Reward Seat Checker’ only seems to update a couple of times per day. It is a decent guide though.

Here is availability to the Maldives for January 2026, taken on 11th September (click to enlarge):

There is not a single day where you can fly in Upper Class, one way, for less than 350,000 Virgin Points. This means 700,000 points (plus £969 of taxes and charges) per person for a return trip, so 1.4 million Virgin Points and £1,938 for a couple.

For comparison, British Airways guarantees four Club World business class seats per flight to the Maldives. Even on a peak date you will only pay 200,000 Avios + £475 per person, return. Two people travelling in January 2026 would save, between them, 1 million points and £988 by choosing BA over Virgin Atlantic.

It’s not great.

If you think the Maldives is an outlier – and obviously its a very high-end destination – take a look at the cost of Upper Class flights to Dubai in November 2025. This is one way pricing, remember, before taxes and charges:

For comparison, a one way British Airways Club World business class redemption to Dubai on a peak date would be 90,000 Avios. The fees element is also far lower with British Airways.

Is there any value left in Virgin Atlantic flight redemptions?

Unsurprisingly, the changes have caused a lot of people to walk away from Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Flying Club.

This is arguably a mistake because there is still a lot of value in the scheme. The remaining articles in this series will show you where to find it. Even if you focus purely on Virgin Atlantic flights:

• there are a lot of good value Economy redemptions, often as low as 6,000 Virgin Points each way plus taxes and charges. These are often on routes where cash tickets are also low, but a redemption ticket is refundable.

• Premium, Virgin Atlantic’s premium economy cabin, can often be good value – seats to the US East Coast as occasionally be found for 10,500 Virgin Points plus taxes and charges each way

• there are, especially to the US East Coast, often good day flights in Upper Class for 29,000 Virgin Points plus taxes and charges – although it is rare to find an overnight flight in the other direction for anything like as little

Let’s look at flights to Boston in January 2026. It is, to be fair, a little chilly in Boston in January, but – once you get past the New Year spike – look at how many dates have economy seats at 6,000 points, Premium seats for 10,500 points or Upper Class seats for 29,000 points:

If you have flexibility and a good coat, there are deals to be had.

Coming up ….

The next two articles in this series will look the actual process of redeeming Virgin Points for Virgin Atlantic flights and how to redeem for flights on SkyTeam partner airlines.