(EXPIRED) 30% transfer bonus from Chase to Virgin Atlantic

Through 11:59PM EST on June 15th, 2023, Chase and Virgin Atlantic are offering a 30% transfer bonus when you transfer Ultimate Rewards points to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. This can be a great deal if you can find availability using one of Virgin Atlantic Flying Club or Virgin Red’s sweet spots, though that condition may be a tall order.

The Deal

• Chase Ultimate Rewards and Virgin Atlantic are offering a 30% transfer bonus when you transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club.

Key Terms

• Bonus points will be reflected in your Virgin Atlantic Flying Club account after the transfer is complete (in other words, you will see a banner advertising this bonus on the Chase side, but the extra 30% will not be included in the transfer on the Chase side
• Valid until 11:59pm EST on 6/15/23

Quick Thoughts

Virgin Atlantic points can be great int he right instances, though those instances are becoming a bit harder to come by.

For example, if you could find business class availability between the US and Europe on Delta that is available via Virgin, this bonus means that you’d only need to transfer 39,000 Ultimate Rewards points to fly from the United States to Europe in business class (since Virgin Atlantic charges 50,000 points for that award). Similarly, awards for travel on Air France and KLM can be an excellent deal with this bonus. The issue in both cases is that it has been increasingly difficult to find available award space on either carrier that is available through Virgin Atlantic.

If you manage to find an available flight that you want to book, it can obviously make sense to take advantage of this bonus. However, I definitely wouldn’t recommend making a speculative transfer. Virgin Atlantic devalued most Delta awards during the pandemic without any prior notice (and only backtracked to restore the Europe sweet spot after a lot of backlash). They once again devalued awards without notice or notification recently when they increased redemption rates on ANA first class awards by tens of thousands of points. I wouldn’t trust Virgin Atlantic points to be any sort of store of value since we never know when other award chart sweet spots will bite the dust.

All that said, this bonus is on until June 15th, so you have a month and a half to search and find a good use. One thing to keep an eye out for would be if Virgin Red brings back redemptions for Virgin Voyages cruises. We’ve seen them offer some relatively close-in sailings for around 100-120K Virgin points. If they bring that back, it would mean that you could potentially book a cruise for two people for 70K-93K points, which could be a great deal. However, as stated above, I wouldn’t speculatively transfer for that with the assumption that it will be offered since we don’t know if or when it will come back, nor is there a guarantee that prices will remain at those levels.

Overall, this transfer bonus certainly could be a good deal in the right circumstances, but be sure that you have a near-term use before you make a transfer. As always, we will add this to our Current point transfer bonuses resource page.

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