Let’s cut to the chase, Virgin Atlantic is offering a 50% bonus when you buy points, and on the surface that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. However, if you use a little brain power and connect a few dots, it could actually spell out o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y. From cashing in your Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Miles for upgrades on Virgin to first class flights on airline partners, there are some cool ways to make this promo work for you.
Virgin Atlantic is offering up to a 50% bonus when you buy points, for a very limited time. Between now and Feb 16th, you can score quite a few extra points which can help unlock a few clever uses, including but not limited to…
- ANA First or Business Class between Tokyo and USA/Europe (either direction).
- Air New Zealand Business Class from USA to NZ, and in the Pacific.
- Delta One Business Class between the USA and Europe or Asia and beyond.
- Singapore Air Business Class within Asia or beyond.
- Flying Virgin Atlantic Airbus A350 Upper Class by award, or upgrade.
Standout Virgin Atlantic Miles Redemptions
ANA’s “The Room” business class is the standout redemption with Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, thanks to their outstanding rates using points. By my estimation, ANA now have the world’s very best business class seat. Take a look here, and you’ll get what I mean.
Virgin Atlantic charges a mere 95,000 Flying Club miles for business class between the USA or Europe and Tokyo, or just 110,000-120,000 for First Class. You can even “open jaw”, and do a trip like London to Tokyo, stopover in Tokyo for as long as you like and then fly Tokyo to the USA, doing nearly around the world for just 95,000 Miles.
If you max out the bonus by purchasing more than 70,000 Flying Club Miles, you’d pay an effective rate of 1p per point, making the cost for two people to book business class around £1400 per ticket all in with all fees, and first class would be around £1650 per person. That’s much lower than business class using cash would typically cost from any UK or US gateway, hence the opportunity. For first class, even more so.
Delta business class is another fantastic option, and Delta’s A350 has privacy doors on all business class suites. These planes fly many routes between Asia and the USA, and select European services. You can get these flights for 50,000-60,000 miles one way, which means this sale can unlock dirt cheap one way business class segments. You can even search for these flights on VirginAtlantic.com.
Now, the big catch here is that you’re not buying miles that let you travel whenever you want – you’re stuck with the availability that ANA gives to partners like Virgin Atlantic, and ANA never releases two first class seats at a time. Business class is far more common for seeing two seats bookable at one time, but it’s hardly consistent in how often its available.
Sometimes great, sometimes not so much.
These opportunities are really only worth it if you know how to search and book these flights, but we’ve got a great guide which makes that a lot closer to your reach. It’s not at all uncommon to see fabulous availability on Delta between Asian gateways and the USA, and from time to time ANA dumps lots of award space which lines up perfectly with your needs.
Buy Virgin Atlantic Miles
At just 1p (UK) per point, I can absolutely save money on luxury travel via this sale, locking in 3000 flights to Tokyo for half the cost or less, all in. I’ve got the flexibility to make dates work, but others won’t and it’s for that reason that only you can decide if this is something for you.
If you do want to buy Virgin Atlantic Miles to upgrade your next Virgin flight, or unlock amazing opportunities on their flying partners, you’ve got until February 16th to do so at these rates. Otherwise, best to wait until the next sale.
NZ-USA business class award space on air New Zealand is pretty few and far between. Air New Zealand would rather give their own Elite members the spare space in business class via their upgrade program.