American Express has joined Chase with offering a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club for the next few weeks.
The Deal
- Get a 30% bonus when transferring American Express Membership Rewards to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club.
Key Terms
- Expires June 14, 2023.
Quick Thoughts
This transfer bonus from Membership Rewards is the same 30% bonus that Chase is offering when transferring Ultimate Rewards. Many will prefer transferring from Amex though thanks to their generosity handing out NLL (No Lifetime Language) welcome offers over the past year or two, plus the fact that transferring from Chase would mean taking points away that could otherwise be transferred to Hyatt.
Virgin has made some no-notice devaluations over the last year or so, so be careful about transferring speculatively. That said, even post-devaluation the 30% bonus can represent good value. The ANA first class sweet spot got less sweet in March when award pricing with Virgin got increased by 32%-42%. This transfer bonus mitigates much of that increase, so the new 72,500 miles one way from the west coast and 85,000 miles one way from central or eastern US rates effectively become 58,000 and 66,000 Membership Rewards respectively which is still an excellent deal.
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My account also shows 20% bonus to Asia Miles, also good through 6/14.
One of the largest sources of modern travel anxiety is seeing a Frequent Miler e-mail come through with “30% transfer bonus…” and hoping the airline program isn’t the one to which I just transferred 300,000 points. (It wasn’t this time!)
That is (sort of) me this time. Used 280k Virgin points a few weeks ago to book Air New Zealand flights. I had gone against conventional wisdom a few years ago and speculatively transferred to Virgin when there was a bonus, so I only needed to top up 80k. Now P2 is asking whether we should speculatively transfer again.