With a 30% bonus, sweet spots get even sweeter…
If you’ve been thinking about using Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles to book a trip, now is the time to do it. American Express recently launched a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic that runs through July 1, 2019 and now Citi has matched with a 30% transfer bonus of its own! So, for every 1,000 Citi ThankYou Points you transfer, you’ll receive 1,300 Virgin miles. That’s a big win in our book!
With the Citi promo, you have until June 22, 2019 at 11:59pm ET to transfer and receive the bonus. Plenty of time to figure out your next trip and get it booked!
Awesome Flights To Book With Virgin Flying Club Miles
With an awesome opportunity like this, the toughest part can be figuring out what trip you want to take. Fortunately, Virgin provides a bunch of great opportunities to book flights with miles thanks to partnerships with several airlines. While Virgin Atlantic has different award charts for each partner, we actually think that’s a good thing as you can find some seriously sweet spots in these charts. Let’s take a look at a couple of these partnerships so you can see what kind of value you can get from this Citi transfer bonus.
If you want some more inspiration, check out this guide to some of the best ways to use Virgin Atlantic miles.
Delta One Suites To Asia And Europe
First up, let’s take a look at Delta. While Delta SkyMiles often requires way too many miles for award tickets on its own flights, Virgin Atlantic has much more reasonable award rates. In fact, rather than using over 120,000 SkyMiles to book a one-way, non-stop flight in Delta One Suites to Asia, you can book the exact same flight with 60,000 Virgin Atlantic miles. Now, that’s how you get tons of value out of your points.
These kinds of opportunities also on Delta flights to Europe. You can use 50,000 Virgin miles instead of 105,000 Delta SkyMiles for a one-way flight in Delta One Suites. When you consider that you’re already using half the number of miles, a 30% transfer bonus almost makes these too good to be true.
Think about it, you only need 47,000 Citi ThankYou Points to book that flight to Asia and you only need 39,000 to book the flight to Europe. Even if you don’t have enough Citi points, you can also take advantage of the 30% Amex transfer bonus to top off your Flying Club account.
You can even search for award space and book these Delta flights right on Virgin’s site. The exception to this is if you want to visit a city where Delta flies that isn’t an option in the online search. In that case, you’ll want to search with Air France or KLM to find space then call Virgin.
ANA First Class To Tokyo
Perhaps the most raved about ways to use Virgin Atlantic miles is to fly ANA first class to Tokyo. Those on the west coast can book round-trip first class — and it must be booked as a round-trip — for only 110,000 Virgin miles. That’s only 85,000 Citi points! Those flying out of the central or eastern part of the US can book for 120,000 Virgin miles which means you only need 93,000 Citi points.
You can book ANA first class out of 6 airports in the US:
- Chicago (ORD)
- Houston (IAH)
- Los Angeles (LAX)
- New York (JFK)
- San Francisco (SFO)
- Washington Dulles (IAD)
If total luxury is your thing, you’ll love this flight. ANA first class comes with top-notch food, great champagne and even better service. We’ve loved our ANA first class experiences and are quite confident you will too. Maybe you’ll even find space for two so you can take a special someone or a travel buddy.
Know Virgin’s Award Ticket Rules Before You Transfer
Now, before you transfer some Citi ThankYou Points — or Amex Membership Rewards points for that matter, you’ll want to be familiar with a couple of rules. This can prevent some heartache after the fact since once you transfer, there’s no going back.
So, most important, remember that Virgin Atlantic requires more miles if you want to include a connection. This means non-stop flights are going to be the best deal but, with the transfer bonus, you might find that it’s still worth including a connection on Delta.
Second, whether you’re booking a flight with Delta, ANA or another partner, you can call Virgin and put award space on hold. While transfers from Citi are usually very quick, this is a great way to ensure you have award seats locked in before you move some points.
Check out our complete guide to redeeming Virgin Atlantic miles for more info on the different award charts and routing rules you need to know.
Should You Transfer If You Don’t Know What To Book Yet?
We’re not a huge fan of speculative transfers as too many things can happen while you wait to find a trip to book. We just don’t know if Virgin will make a negative change to their program so it’s better to keep your ThankYou Points with Citi.
As we saw recently, Chase had the points world excited when it released its first transfer bonus with British Airways. A week later British Airways announced that it would devalue its partner award rates at the end of May. Not cool.
You can avoid a lot of pain by holding your points in transferable points programs until you are ready to book.
Final Thoughts
A 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic is always welcome but the fact that Citi and American Express are overlapping these promotions makes it even better. With both running the promo, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting the Virgin miles you need for a fun trip. Now, get booking!
H/T: moe8555
Hey Spencer, I just took a look at the Virgin Atlantic Award chart and for Delta, it only shows redemptions between the US and the UK, and there are some pretty hefty fees for traveling on Delta award tickets. Did they recently take away redemptions to Asia?
Hey Johannes – Check out our guide to redeeming Virgin miles linked in the post. I included the award chart for Delta to other regions in that post. Sadly, using Virgin miles to the UK is rough when it comes to surcharges.