[Travel] Air miles

[Mr Bridger]

Seem to remember a thread not so long ago about Virgin air miles, but can’t seem to find it.
Anyone clued up on best way to use air miles ? I have nearly 80,000 virgin air miles and want to have a holiday flying first class and not sure about reward flights. Anyone?

 

[Ernest]

Seem to remember a thread not so long ago about Virgin air miles, but can’t seem to find it.
Anyone clued up on best way to use air miles ? I have nearly 80,000 virgin air miles and want to have a holiday flying first class and not sure about reward flights. Anyone?

Don't know about that but British Airways AVIOS have a load of offers on this weekend for Black Friday so Virgin may have something similar

 

[Springal]

Seem to remember a thread not so long ago about Virgin air miles, but can’t seem to find it.
Anyone clued up on best way to use air miles ? I have nearly 80,000 virgin air miles and want to have a holiday flying first class and not sure about reward flights. Anyone?

https://www.loungebuddy.com/blog/flying-club-virgin-atlantics-ultimate-guide/

Will give you a good overview of the program, tips etc

 

[thedonkeycentrehalf]

80,000 miles doesn't get you much with VA when it comes to flights. Recommendations are usually to buy upgrades rather than reward flights if that is what you want. VA used to have a crap scheme but changed a while ago to give more options for spending miles. Details at https://www.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/flying-club/partners.html

 

[dazzer6666]

Problem with spending miles is flight availability- the airlines don’t release many seats at all that can be bought with miles, and you either have to be very quick (ie booking up to a year in advance) or very flexible to get anything in first/upper/business solely using miles. Too many frequent fliers chasing too few seats..........

 

[Bozza]

Seem to remember a thread not so long ago about Virgin air miles, but can’t seem to find it.
Anyone clued up on best way to use air miles ? I have nearly 80,000 virgin air miles and want to have a holiday flying first class and not sure about reward flights. Anyone?

It depends on where you are flying and when, as Virgin changed the redemption cost of miles a couple of years or so back. Essentially if you want to fly in peak periods (ie school holidays) it will cost you more miles than if you travel off-peak.

80,000 miles may not get you very far in Virgin's Upper Class (they don't have a First Class offering), you can check it out here: https://www.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/flying-club/miles/spend-miles/reward-flights.html - you may do better when they have a miles sale on.

 

[Bozza]

Problem with spending miles is flight availability- the airlines don’t release many seats at all that can be bought with miles, and you either have to be very quick (ie booking up to a year in advance) or very flexible to get anything in first/upper/business solely using miles. Too many frequent fliers chasing too few seats..........

We've had pretty good luck flying Virgin to Orlando and Miami using miles over the last 7 or 8 years, generally getting PE and sometimes Upper, and on occasion booking quite late on.

Just checking my booking history, we booked on the 24th July last year to fly PE using miles direct to Orlando on 2nd August and back PE direct on 24th August. From what I recall there was widespread availability.

 

[casbom]

Lovely bloke Alan Deller, very down to earth, you wouldn't know he owned Air Miles at the time I worked there in the late 90's. The idea behind it was to use up the remaining seats on Schedule Flights, so he came up with this idea. Unfortunately now as Dazzer says it's getting harder and harder to use them for flights.

 

[dazzer6666]

We've had pretty good luck flying Virgin to Orlando and Miami using miles over the last 7 or 8 years, generally getting PE and sometimes Upper, and on occasion booking quite late on.

Just checking my booking history, we booked on the 24th July last year to fly PE using miles direct to Orlando on 2nd August and back PE direct on 24th August. From what I recall there was widespread availability.

I had a look just now using Avios via BA (I’ve got an Exec Club gold card, BA Amex card, free companion voucher and free 2500 point voucher banked, and about 250,000 avios) at a few select locations (club cabin) :

-Cape Town - nothing for 6 months
-Caribbean - could only get out and back to Jamaica within a 2 week window in the next 6 months
-Singapore - basically nothing available for 6 months

Maybe I need to switch my allegiance to Virgin........

 

[Bry Nylon]

I had a look just now using Avios via BA (I’ve got an Exec Club gold card, BA Amex card, free companion voucher and free 2500 point voucher banked, and about 250,000 avios) at a few select locations (club cabin) :

-Cape Town - nothing for 6 months
-Caribbean - could only get out and back to Jamaica within a 2 week window in the next 6 months
-Singapore - basically nothing available for 6 months

Magaluf?

 

[dazzer6666]

Magaluf?

Didn’t look. Did manage to book a return to Faro a few days ago using avios though [emoji106]

 

[Springal]

I had a look just now using Avios via BA (I’ve got an Exec Club gold card, BA Amex card, free companion voucher and free 2500 point voucher banked, and about 250,000 avios) at a few select locations (club cabin) :

-Cape Town - nothing for 6 months
-Caribbean - could only get out and back to Jamaica within a 2 week window in the next 6 months
-Singapore - basically nothing available for 6 months

Maybe I need to switch my allegiance to Virgin........

Surprising, I managed to book 2x Biz Class tickets using Avios on BA 3 weeks ago. Pretty much saw availability every day but had to be flexible on airports (in to LAX out from SJC)

 

[Leosayer]

I managed to book 4 business class tickets to New York feb half term week on BA using avios and 2 Amex companion vouchers for 250k miles a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to find this. Quite pleased with this, the 4 tickets would have cost £12,500 so this has saved over 10k, the tax you pay is still exorbitant.

Not much availability elsewhere in the states at that time in business but there did seem to be availability in economy to most places.

What I have found is that it makes a huge difference if you get to BA gold, lots more seats become available including in the school holidays.

 

[dazzer6666]

Surprising, I managed to book 2x Biz Class tickets using Avios on BA 3 weeks ago. Pretty much saw availability every day but had to be flexible on airports (in to LAX out from SJC)

Routes with multiple flights are always ok - LAX, JFK for example..........

 

[dazzer6666]

I managed to book 4 business class tickets to New York feb half term week on BA using avios and 2 Amex companion vouchers for 250k miles a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to find this. Quite pleased with this, the 4 tickets would have cost £12,500 so this has saved over 10k, the tax you pay is still exorbitant.

Not much availability elsewhere in the states at that time in business but there did seem to be availability in economy to most places.

What I have found is that it makes a huge difference if you get to BA gold, lots more seats become available including in the school holidays.

Gold card def helps.....but there are so many daily flights to NYC the availability is loads better.

 

[Bozza]

Anyway, going back to the OP, depending on where/when you are looking to fly and assuming that you may not have enough miles for an Upper Class seat I'd book PE and then keep a lookout, daily, on the upgrade cost to Upper. You may find you can snag an upgrade for a reasonable price. If not, you still get to fly in a better class, and PE on Virgin is decent enough.

If you need to boost your miles, you could apply for the Gold Amex Rewards card. if you spend £2,000 in the first three months you get 22,000 points which you can transfer straight to Virgin miles on a one-for-one basis, and the transfer happens almost immediately when you request it. It's a card with a fee but you don't have to pay it in the first year, so just cancel when you get your miles.

Amex Gold Rewards Link