A while ago I reported that Virgin Atlantic was going to overhaul it’s frequent flyer program’s miles redemption charts. Namely, it was going to move to a dynamic pricing-based system. Usually this spells doom for a frequent flyer program. These changes have been active since October 30th, so I thought to give a quick look at what has changed, and whether things ahve turned out for the better or not.

1. What exactly was Virgin going to change about Flying Club?
2. Some good things have come of this!
   1. Point requirements have stayed reasonable(ish)
   2. Taxes and fees have been cut dramatically, follow dynamic pricing?
   3. It’s easy to get Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points
   4. Partner awards have stayed the same?
3. Summary

What exactly was Virgin going to change about Flying Club?

To summarize the fundamentals of some of Virgin’s changes to its Flying Club program, I wanted to briefly touch on what I had reported on before. The major announcement here revolved around the move to pricing award redemptions dynamically, which means that the required amount of miles to redeem for a flight would vary based on market demand. Usually when airlines have made this switch, the required amount of miles for redemptions skyrockets, hugely devaluing that program (e.g. Delta SkyMiles and United MileagePlus).

These were the major points of the announcement:

• “The price of seats will vary in line with demand, in a similar way to standard tickets.”
• Rather than the usual 12 guaranteed seats on every flight, every single seat will be available for points redemption, in every cabin.
• Points will also be used to upgrade from one cabin to both Premium and Upper Class.
• Supposedly there will be saver awards as well, at a price point similar or lower than offered currently. For example, Virgin Atlantic states the possibility of redeeming just 6000 points for a flight to New York, though the origin remained unspecified – probably London?
• The number of points earned on Upper Class and Premium tickets will be increased by respectively up to 50% and 75%.

Some good things have come of this!

Now let’s taker a look at what has changed now. It actually seems as though the changes have been somewhat positive. I searched for an itinerary from New Hork-JFK to London-Heathrow (LHR) as a test case, primarily because flights to or from the UK always had outrageous taxes and fees added to them, in part because of the fuel surcharges that are delivered to the customer in their entirety. Looking at a few dates, I was happy to see that (1) the 6000 point saver awards are not so hard to find and (2) the fuel surcharges (especially in premium cabins) seem to have dropped. Let’s look at this in a little bit more detail

Point requirements have stayed reasonable(ish)

The first major point is that, as of right now, points requirements aren’t through the roof all over the place, as we have previously seen with Delta SkyMiles – this was one of the main concerns with Virgin’s move to dynamic pricing. That is to say, the points requirements clearly vary with season, and can be tremendously higher in the summer months compared to winter.

I took to Seats.Aero to search redemption opportunities with Virgin Atlantic for the next 8 months or so between New York and London. I specifically picked this route because redemption opportunities to the UK typically suffer from exorbitant taxes and fees, primarily due to fuel surcharges. It’s not uncommon to see such fees in excess of $1000. I will get to this in a little more detail later on, though.

I flipped through 11 pages of options of direct flights only to ensure that when I see ‘Virgin’ as the ‘Program’ airline, it should only be flights operated by Virgin Atlantic or Delta Airlines (since Delta is in the same alliance as Virgin, i.e. SkyTeam). So, the below screen grabs will feature some ‘hidden’ Delta flights but I checked many of them to make sure that by and large the prices shown here are in fact Virgin Atlantic flights. So there shouldn’t be too many non-Virgin flights spoiling the search. Let’s go through them.

In November, we see some very expensive rates, given that these are last minute. With dynamic pricing we would expect redemption requirements to go up, since the cash price would do the same. Hence economy redemptions are at 47,000 miles and up, which is a terrible value.

Over Christmas and New Years, prices are very high as well, as expected. Perhaps don’t expect to get good redemptions with Virgin around these busy travel periods.

We go into January and the redemption requirements plummet to some very low levels. 6000 points for a one-way economy flight? That’s probably the lowest you will ever get on this route. Also Premium economy prices are great at 10,000 points, with Business at an excellent 29,000 points. Some great deals to be had, for sure!

In March requirements stay good, given that it’s still winter and people aren’t traveling as much, or, perhaps, they are going to warmer places:

In May we can see requirements going up in Business, but Economy still sports some very low prices, at 6000 points:

Things get tougher again for summer, as one would expect, with redemption requirements going up:

Overall, prices definitely seem to go up and down with demand, so the days of standardized point redemption requirements throughout the year are gone. to be fair, these dynamics had probably always been present to some extent, so this is not necessaily an entirely new development. Importantly, prices haven’t gone through the roof across the board, with some very, very good redemption opportunities that do indeed appear lower than was available previously. Economy at 6000, Premium at 10,000 and Business at 29,000, I would certainly say that on balance things may have improved a little, given that these are not rare oppertunities. If you are flexible and time your travel properly, you should be able to get these rates without too much issue.

It’s also worthwhile pointing out that in the summer flights shown above, the 20,000-point flights are actually Delta-operated. The 12,000-point flights are the Virgin-operated flights. 12,000 points essentially conforms to some of the saver award flights Virgin used to have before the implementation of the dynamic pricing, meaning that overall, we do see that Virgin kept its word: the new, 6000 point saver award is actually lower than what used to be, and even in high-demand seasons as summer, prices are not necessarily higher than what they used to be, it seems.

Taxes and fees have been cut dramatically, follow dynamic pricing?

When redeeming flights, the number of points is one part of the equation only. I already mentioned that the reason I picked the specific routing to London is because I was curious how taxes and fees may have changed. I’m happy to say that these seem to have been cut somewhat, so that the low points totals are not accompanied with excruciatingly high taxes as is typically the case with redemptions on British Airways.

Using the same route as before, I now specifically searched for direct flights on January 16th 2025. The below options are some of the ‘cheapest’ that show up:

As you can see, Virgin’s flight is there as it showed up in the images I posted further above, but now I’m also showing some of the other flights you may fine, such as on British Airways. These flights can be booked through various other programs, but overall, these three, plus another one by Jetblue, are the cheapest direct business class flights in terms of points requirements that you can find. Now let’s also add in the taxes and fees, which can sometimes truly break what looks like a good redemption:

Program	Operating Airline	Points Req	Fees
Virgin Atlantic	Virgin Atlantic	29,000	$249.70
American	British Airways	57,500	$732.30
Qantas	British Airways	61,200	$1027.80
Etihad Guest	JetBlue	80,000	$32.30

I would say this is very exciting. Looking this over, you will notice two things: Virgin Atlantic gives the lowest points requirement, and it requires the least amount of taxes and fees, at $249.70. If you use my very conservative valuation of 1 cent/point, that business class ticket amounts to $539.70 – which is a really great deal! To compare, American asks $1307.30, Qantas asks $1639.80, and Etihad asks $832.30.

I did a little bit more digging through the search results shown in the previous section of this post, to get an idea of the range in taxes and fees that Virgin asks, and here’s what I found:

Price range	Economy	Premium	Business
Low end	$72.20	$103.90	$249.70
High end	$84.90	$180.00	$471.60

It seems as though there is a range, with a lower and a higher end. That is to say, in economy the difference is minimal but it makes a big difference in business. My take is that the taxes and fees seem to be bound to high and low season, as the lower range prices were predominately in the winter months, and the higher end in the summer. So, this is something you’d want to keep an eye on.

Overall though, the slashing of these taxes and fees, even to the higher end of $471.60, is still half of what these taxes used to amount to, at $900-1000 per one-way flight. I’m not sure how Virgin was able to do this, but it’s a terrific improvement over the previous situation. It also leaves British Airways in the dust, and if I were to look into booking flights to the UK, I’d certainly be checking out Virgin Atlantic first.

It’s easy to get Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points

I wanted to emphasize that Virgin Atlantic Flying Club is an attractive program from the perspective that many credit card transferable points currencies can be transferred to this program. Chase Ultimate Rewards, Capital One Rewards Miles, Citibank ThankYou Points and Amex Rewards all transfer to Flying Club, making it easy to acquire these points and redeem them for flights. Some of these currencies actually transfer to Virgin Red, which is the ‘parent’ program to Flying Club, but it all amounts to the same currency in the end. This should make it easy to make use of the changes that were now implemented to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club.

Partner awards have stayed the same?

When searching for the above flights, one thing that stood out to me was that the pricing for partner flights hadn’t been affected. For example, the 20,000-point redemption with Delta, or some Air France and KLM flights starting at 12,000 miles seemed similae (or the same) from what I remembered from before these changes. I decided to check with some other blogs that I sometimes frequent to make sure I was right on this, but indeed it seems that partner awards have not been affected. This is great news because Virgin does have some very interesting redemptions on partners, one of them being All Nippon Airways, for instance. While not particularly easy, as you may need to call Virgin to book, this can be a lucrative route for some amazing flights!

Summary

In this post I looked at how Virgin Atlantic’s announced changes to its frequent flyer program have actually panned out. It seems as though things have improved a bit on balance, with lower redemption requirements at least in off season. We can find economy flights at 6000 points with $70-80 in taxes, which is a great value! Even in business, if you’re flexible, you should be able to find opportunities at sub-30,000 points with $250 in taxes. It also helps that Virgin Atlantic Flying Club is a partner to many credit card transferable points currencies, so it’s easy to get these points and spend them on these opportunities.

Let me emphasize again how big a deal it is that that the taxes and fees have been cut down to $500 and under – that is quite revolutionary for UK-based airlines and, in my mind, makes it worthwhile to redeem points for flights to the UK. If you’re planning to fly to the UK, I would recommend looking at Virgin Atlantic first, unless you have points to burn with other programs.