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I will shortly book 4 one way tickets on a virgin flight ( in December 2025. We are red tier members.
The return flight will only load and become available in about 2-3 weeks.
The 4 outbound flights are 20k virgin points each plus about £150 each in taxes.
What benefit will I receive by using my reward voucher?
Will I get 75k off (ie then only use 5k points), or will they just discount 20k (so I still need to use 60k points).
Also, now that I have a voucher number, can this be booked online or does it still require a telephone booking?
only get 20k and yes you have to call
I think it’s more complicated. The way the new pricing works, when you go to book the return legs (and I take as given you have 4 vouchers to redeem and are using them tp upgrade a class?) the phone agent will re-price the entire itinerary. So you actually don’t even know if your “up to 75K” voucher is any good to you till the return leg pricing is available.
Furthermore, with booking for 4 on 4 separate vouchers, it is possible that one or more tickets exhaust the price the agent initially sees. Such that ticket 3 might price at a different higher rate.
only get 20k and yes you have to call
Thanks.
Hopefully in 3 weeks time when I book the return flights, they can link up the two separate bookins and give me another 20k off the return flights too?
I think it’s more complicated. The way the new pricing works, when you go to book the return legs (and I take as given you have 4 vouchers to redeem and are using them tp upgrade a class?) the phone agent will re-price the entire itinerary. So you actually don’t even know if your “up to 75K” voucher is any good to you till the return leg pricing is available.
Furthermore, with booking for 4 on 4 separate vouchers, it is possible that one or more tickets exhaust the price the agent initially sees. Such that ticket 3 might price at a different higher rate.
I only have 1 voucher. Looking to get at least 1 of the 4 flight tickets for “free”
You can’t use the voucher in “halves” any more, but the agent may be able to add it using the full value when the flights are re-priced.
I’m assuming based on the the pricing that these are economy seats?
If the whole thing is repriced when you add the return I really can’t see the point in booking the outbound before the inbound flights are released.
The only possible benefit is that if the outbound pricing jumps sufficiently in the interim that two one-way bookings (i.e. leaving the outbound booking untouched) become more attractive even though you’d only be getting the benefit of the voucher on the outbound.
A lot of us are in the mindset of jumping on redemption seats as soon as they are released. However the best time to book cash fares (decent sales aside) is normally around 3 months ahead of travel and you’d logically expect dynamically priced redemption seats to follow a similar pattern. Are the seats you are looking at marked as saver seats?
You can’t use the voucher in “halves” any more, but the agent may be able to add it using the full value when the flights are re-priced.
I’m afraid they’re unable to do much at all with the new system other than new bookings. Even cancellations are causing confusion. Such a shame as the agents themselves remain unfailingly helpful and clear.
I’m assuming based on the the pricing that these are economy seats?
If the whole thing is repriced when you add the return I really can’t see the point in booking the outbound before the inbound flights are released.
The only possible benefit is that if the outbound pricing jumps sufficiently in the interim that two one-way bookings (i.e. leaving the outbound booking untouched) become more attractive even though you’d only be getting the benefit of the voucher on the outbound.
A lot of us are in the mindset of jumping on redemption seats as soon as they are released. However the best time to book cash fares (decent sales aside) is normally around 3 months ahead of travel and you’d logically expect dynamically priced redemption seats to follow a similar pattern. Are the seats you are looking at marked as saver seats?
Yes, 4 economy seats that are hopefully saver tickets.
Given school term dates, I will have the book the outbound as soon as they become available. As they will likely be gone 3 weeks later when the inbound flight is loaded.
I guess I can see how the outbounds have changed to determine whether I leave it as 2 separate booking or ask for a reprice so I can use the voucher in full. Feels a crappy system now, as most I save on the voucher is 20k points.
Given school term dates, I will have the book the outbound as soon as they become available. As they will likely be gone 3 weeks later when the inbound flight is loaded.
I’m not saying don’t do it, just that it may work to your disadvantage on the new system. Unlike the old system, seats will still be available 3 weeks+ later, in theory for as long as any cash tickets are available. The price may go up or down of course.
If they are saver seats I can see the logic of grabbing them whilst they are available at that price. If not, I’d be more inclined to wait, especially since you are likely to be getting them repriced anyway to get the companion seat on the inbound (assuming they can even do it).
Resurrecting this due to something mentioned a couple of times here which seems to have been overlooked.
Long story short, I found a chunk of VS points had appeared unexpectedly in our VFC account. This is what I’ve discovered:
With the change to the Virgin CC voucher being worth 75k/150k points, these can be used to upgrade an award flight by more than one cabin, if the points stretch that far.
I did not realise this initially, so booked MAN-MCO in PE, for 21k points plus taxes for 2 of us, and called Virgin to apply the voucher to upgrade us both to UC (which was 29k points each at that time).
Turns out, though, I could have just booked us both in Y, for 15k points, and the voucher would still have been sufficient to upgrade us both to UC.
What Virgin had done was re-calculate the points required when issuing the new tickets, and refunded me the points I used unnecessarily for PE.
You cannot argue with this kind of CS!
Resurrecting this due to something mentioned a couple of times here which seems to have been overlooked.
Long story short, I found a chunk of VS points had appeared unexpectedly in our VFC account. This is what I’ve discovered:
With the change to the Virgin CC voucher being worth 75k/150k points, these can be used to upgrade an award flight by more than one cabin, if the points stretch that far.
I did not realise this initially, so booked MAN-MCO in PE, for 21k points plus taxes for 2 of us, and called Virgin to apply the voucher to upgrade us both to UC (which was 29k points each at that time).
Turns out, though, I could have just booked us both in Y, for 15k points, and the voucher would still have been sufficient to upgrade us both to UC.
What Virgin had done was re-calculate the points required when issuing the new tickets, and refunded me the points I used unnecessarily for PE.
You cannot argue with this kind of CS!
That’s really good to know, thanks. I have seen lots of flights which are super cheap economy, crazy expensive PE, then reasonable UC. I thought that these were just non-starters due to the 1-class upgrade.
But actually, it sounds like these are ideal candidates for skipping straight from cheap Eco up to reasonable points UC, bypassing the crazy PE pricing.
If you use eco+ voucher to upgrade to upper do you get 100 tier points each way
If you use eco+ voucher to upgrade to upper do you get 100 tier points each way
Yes
Thanks for your quick response
If you use eco+ voucher to upgrade to upper do you get 100 tier points each way
No. You get the TPs for the revenue bucket you booked in to and not the cabin you flew in.
This is listed in the small print for TP earning: “ If you upgraded from a revenue fare to a higher cabin with points, your account will be credited with the tier points and Virgin Points based on your original revenue class”. This is hidden in the “how many TPs you earn each way” tab at https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/flying-club/members/membership-tiers.html.
In my experience this year of upgrading VS H to G with points and with a voucher, I got H points for both. This didn’t used to be the case.
This is a different case though. We’re talking about booking an Economy ticket on points and using the voucher to upgrade it further (because you can’t use the voucher just to buy a ticket).
Eg:
Not allowed – book a 69k Upper seat for yourself with the voucher
Is allowed – book a 6k economy seat for yourself and upgrade with the voucher to the 69k Upper seat
In this case you WOULD get tier points for the Upper seat, I suggest.
Fair play. I’m interested in this one, then, as if they start that loophole, I’m going to start booking everything as the cheapest possible Economy Classic redemption going, and bumping up with points and vouchers.
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