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Update 12/31/24: Just a quick reminder that this transfer bonus ends tonight. There’s also a decent amount of low priced award availability bookable with Virgin Atlantic right now, with the easiest way of finding that being Virgin’s Reward Seat Finder. From the west coast, flights from Seattle to London are available from 9,000, 30,000 or 60,000 points in economy, premium economy and upper (business) class respectively. With the 40% transfer bonus, that’s only ~6,500, ~21,500 or ~43,000 Membership Rewards per person respectively that you’d need to transfer.
Prices are even lower from the east coast. From JFK to London you can book flights from 6,000, 10,500 or 29,000 points in economy, premium economy and upper class respectively. That means the 40% transfer bonus can reduce the required number of Membership Rewards you need to transfer per person to ~4,500, 7,500 or ~21,000 respectively.
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American Express Membership Rewards is out with a new transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic: through 12/31/24, get a 40% transfer bonus when you transfer points to Virgin Atlantic. This is now the ninth transfer bonus we’ve seen to Virgin Atlantic in 2024 and the tenth in the past 12 months.
The Deal
- American Express Membership Rewards is offering a 40% transfer bonus when you transfer points to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club through 12/31/24
Key Terms
- Expires 12/31/24
- Must transfer in increments of 1,000 points
Quick Thoughts
Just days after the expiration of a 40% transfer bonus from Chase, Amex has launched a similar 40% bonus to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. As was the case with the bonus from Chase, this can be a great deal if you have a near-term redemption in mind. Virgin Atlantic has had some sweet deals on its own flights since going dynamic this fall. We also sometimes see good deals on cruises, though current cruise offerings range from ~187K points for 5 nights to 245K points for 7 nights or 372.5K for 10 nights (with lots of different options). With a 40% bonus, the deals are OK, but not nearly as good as they once were.
While some may be tempted to make a speculative transfer given the big bonus, that’s not something that would interest me. As noted at the top, with a look at our current point transfer bonuses page we can see that this is the ninth transfer bonus we’ve seen to Virgin Atlantic in 2024 alone and the tenth within the past 12 months. Transfer bouses to Virgin are so frequent that I never feel much urgency to transfer — there’s a decent chance that one will be running if and when I need to make a redemption. Couple that with the fact that Virgin has an established track record of no-notice, no-notification devaluations and its newfound completely dynamic pricing for its own awards and I just wouldn’t want to get points locked up until I’m ready to use them. I simply don’t have faith that today’s good uses will be there when I need them months or years in the future.
That said, if you do find availability, Virgin does have some good sweet spots. I was thrilled to find 8 seats in business class on Air France for 48,500 points per passenger for travel early next summer. A deal like that drops to around 35K points each with a 40% transfer bonus, which is terrific. But I’d recommend finding the availability before making the transfer.
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From your ‘How often….’ chart, this is the only 40% from banks, except Bilt, dating back to 2018.
Is this in part bc of the switch to dynamic? If so, is this only a one time and only event?
At these rates, I might have booked Upper Class for a quick trip to London in February if Virgin didn’t have one of the worst J products with their 787-9s.
Can you get the 40% bonus on UK Amex transfers?
They need to stop devaluing the cruises! Smdh
Probably a devaluation coming…
Nick, I think this is worth a speculative transfer. Virgins new dynamic chart has some very good values. I booked two tickets for my son IAD to LHR 6k points plus 105 each. I also booked two premium economy tickets for myself BOS-LHR for May next year 10,500 points plus 110. Fantatstic value to be had for now. Yes it could change, but for now Virgin is by far the cheapest way to get frpom USA to LHR.
Seems to me that VS desperately needs some cash…
They haven’t gone the Avianca route of selling the miles for a song, but the transfer bonuses make clear that they really, really want access to US credit card rewards money.
They are not alone, KL/AF made no bones about restructuring their program and introduced an actually useful cobranded credit card to access US consumers. BA wants to play in this space, but doesn’t at the same time want to offer real value outside of credit card SUBs.
And it seems they just wrecked the opportunity to get status easily. I haven’t spent too much time looking at the changes to Executive Club announced this week, but the reporting is universally bad. I follow a couple of British sources. I’ll wait for their reviews soon.
The redemption rates on BA are really uncompetitive pretty much across the board. They want to act like a US program, but US programs are much more customer friendly on change fees and last ticket availability through the program. They must feel like they have a captive customer base that they can squeeze.