American Express Membership Rewards is out with a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club starting today and valid through 5/31/24. This can be a great deal if you find availability for a good redemption.
The Deal
- American Express Membership Rewards is offering a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club through May 31, 2024
Key Terms
- You must be an eligible Membership Rewards® Card Member enrolled in Virgin Atlantic Flying Club in order to participate in this offer
- Minimum transfer is 1,000 Membership Rewards points. Redeem for this exclusive offer from 12:00 a.m. MT on 4/21/2024 to 11:59 p.m. MT on 5/31/2024 to receive 30% additional Virgin Points.
- Additional Virgin Points will be awarded at the time of transfer.
- Generally, transfers are immediate but please allow up to 72 hours for the transfer to be completed.
Quick Thoughts
This is a great offer for those who find award space that works for them with Virgin Atlantic or its partners.
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club has many great sweet spot uses. One of the best-known (but among the hardest to find available and book) is Delta One to Europe for just 50,000 Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points (which is a far lower price than what Delta charges in SkyMiles), but there are other great uses for premium economy and business class on Air France and KLM (both to/from and within Europe) and ANA first class, which increased in price substantially but remains a solid deal.
I don’t tend to get excited about using Virgin Atlantic Flying Club to fly on Virgin Atlantic because of the high surcharges that they levy on their own flights in most cases, but for folks who would otherwise pay for a Virgin Atlantic flight their own redemptions can make sense. Also keep in mind that surcharges are significantly lower when departing certain foreign destinations. For instance, I booked an itinerary on Virgin Atlantic from South Africa to London to New York in business class that only had about $350 in surcharges per passenger — far less than most redemptions on Virgin Atlantic metal.
I would generally recommend against making speculative transfers since Virgin Atlantic could devalue at any time. I’d only transfer with either an immediate use in mind or perhaps if I were highly confident that I would tailor a trip around redeeming the points well one way or another.
I don’t currently see any Virgin Voyages available with points via the Virgin Red app, but it’ll be worth keeping an eye on that over the coming weeks to see if Virgin releases any space on its cruise ships. Those have historically been excellent redemptions of Virgin points that look even better yet with a good transfer bonus.
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I got 50k Amex pts through business checking promo. When I try to transfer those point to Virgin it shows the standard transfer redemption. It does not show the 30% bonus. Am I doing something wrong?
just had the most painful process booking ZNZ to CDG in business using Virgin Atlantic points. Saw 2 business seats available on the Virgin website. did the transfer from AmEx and points were available instantly at Virgin. However, Virgin wouldn’t let me book the flight online saying the seats were not available every time I input my credit card info and errored my transaction over and over again. Unbelievably frustrating. Called Virgin and the Customer Service rep was able to book the flight for me. so painful.
Found ORD-VIE for just 12,000 miles in economy (plus $120 taxes}. What a great deal for 9,000 MR points!