A work-around for Virgin Atlantic’s grayed out “Points” search

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Here’s a solution to a problem that I expect relatively few readers will encounter or care about.  But those who have run into it have no doubt been extremely frustrated.  When using Virgin Atlantic’s website to search for partner awards (e.g. you want to use Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Delta, Air France, or KLM), it seems impossible to search certain routes.  The option to search for “Points” is grayed out and unclickable.  Fortunately, I found an easy work-around…

If the website only lets you choose to show the price in “Money” and not “Points,” the workaround is to temporarily change to a multi-city search, pick “Points” and then return to a one-way or round-trip search.

1) Enter your desired origin and destination

Go to VirginAtlantic.com, Click “Book”.  Enter the route you want to search and click “Advanced Search”.  If the option to show price in points is grayed out, then proceed to step 2.

This is an example of a route in which the Virgin Atlantic website won’t let you search for award flights. The option to show the price in points is grayed out.

2) Switch to Multi-City & Select “Points”

Once you switch from “One way” or “Round trip” to “Multi city” the option to select Points should now be available.  Select it.

The first step of the solution is to switch the search to “Multi city” and pick “Points”. You can now return to a one-way or round-trip search.

3) Return to “One way” or “Round trip” and search

After selecting “Points” in the Multi-City view, you can return to your intended search and “Points” should still be selected.

After selecting “Points” on the Multi city display, you can return to “One way” or “Round trip” and the system will retain the “Points” selection.

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