Virgin Atlantic Airmiles

[jf256]

For anyone who is wanting to use virgin air miles for Premium / Upper class tickets. Virgin made a big announcement two days ago.

There will now be 2 guaranteed Premium and 2 guaranteed UC tickets on every flight that is loaded 331 days in advance. This should substantially increase the amount of reward flights available on reward flight redemptions. So might be worth keeping an eye on if you are into that sort of thing.

Following on from this announcement they also seem to have dropped a lot of reward availability for Premium Economy at the start of 2023. So If you are travelling in Jan, Feb, March and have miles / club card points you want to burn through - this might be a good time. As always please consider the taxes you still need to pay but it is worth a look.

I just managed to convert my mco - manchester to London Heathrow on the same day so i am really happy.

 

[Plague]

have miles / club card points you want to burn through

As it was an option I burnt most of mine on Virgin Red products (mostly ) as there was a big chance of me never using them.

 

[jf256]

As it was an option I burnt most of mine on Virgin Red products (mostly ) as there was a big chance of me never using them.

That is fair enough - once we have taken this trip we are going to do the same (but we don't drink..so it will go towards wedding wine!)

 

[jjj4]

I was wondering how simple is it to find out how many points are needed to upgrade an existing booking? I’ve been collecting for ages but never spent any.….

 

[jf256]

I was wondering how simple is it to find out how many points are needed to upgrade an existing booking? I’ve been collecting for ages but never spent any.….

https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/...nts/spend-on-flights/upgrade-with-points.html
Also if you are flying solo you can get a free upgrade if you spend £10,000 on the virgin credit card.

Both are available from cash rates but both will require there to be reward availability for the day you want to upgrade on. You can check https://www.seatspy.com/index for availability but there is a fee for checking premium and upper class.

I am pretty sure you need to call in to do it with miles - so word of warning on that one it took us 3 hours to get through a couple of weeks ago and 1 1/2 hours today first thing in the morning.

 

[jjj4]

https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/...nts/spend-on-flights/upgrade-with-points.html
Also if you are flying solo you can get a free upgrade if you spend £10,000 on the virgin credit card.

Both are available from cash rates but both will require there to be reward availability for the day you want to upgrade on. You can check https://www.seatspy.com/index for availability but there is a fee for checking premium and upper class.

I am pretty sure you need to call in to do it with miles - so word of warning on that one it took us 3 hours to get through a couple of weeks ago and 1 1/2 hours today first thing in the morning.

Thanks for the link and your advice.

 

[Plague]

require there to be reward availability for the day

This is why I've largely given up chasing points with VA. Even if I'm flying with them, the resort and tickets are booked months before flights become available, so there is a good chance the availability won't be there, and then it becomes a juggling act of hoops to jump through trying to match things up

I do use accumulated points if I can (Eg, I'm using Aer Lingus to Orlando this year and supposedly their Avios points can be used on BA who I have been using for European flights) but I'm not going out of my way to collect them.

 

[jf256]

This is why I've largely given up chasing points with VA. Even if I'm flying with them, the resort and tickets are booked months before flights become available, so there is a good chance the availability won't be there, and then it becomes a juggling act of hoops to jump through trying to match things up

Yeah I totally get that. Virgin availability up until yesterday was pants..

We are lucky that if we want to we can do an extra night here and there and adjust any trip we make really easily - due to OH being self employed and my company being really understanding. We booked this trip around the flight availability but even if we didnt want to - we could add a day in a non disney resort, add a day at universal without there being too many issues.
I am going to be swapping over to BA now that they have a mastercard. Really the only reason we collected the points was because we had to pay a massive deposit on our wedding venue - so we needed a mastercard to do it (BA didnt have a mastercard option) - also BAs new planes look like a much better configuration than they were before.

You can use Avios on Aer Lingus and BA and I am genuinely considering flying with them from Dublin for our honeymoon just to avoid the excessive taxes.

 

[Plague]

You can use Avios on Aer Lingus and BA

When I booked my Aer Lingus flights back in January I had some BA Avios points*, but it seemed that the linking was still a work in progress. So check before you book.

( * I later grabbed a week in Spain and used (most of) the Avios on BA flights for that.)

 

[jf256]

I would also suggest with BA that you use their executive club portal as it is totally free. If you are going to buy something online just check to see if you can get points using this.
Unless you are already using a cashback site or something. It is literally free points for something you were already doing.

I got 13000 in 2020 - then gave up using it as we went to virgin instead. But seriously worth it because like i said its one extra step and you can get a few more which might be the difference between you getting that redemption or not.

Again caveat if you can use a discount portal (like student loan) and get actual money off do that and if you are already using a cashback site continue.