Chase is now offering a 40% bonus for transfers to Virgin Atlantic

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For those who don’t want to use the mileage sale that Virgin Atlantic is currently running, there’s now another way to boost a Flying Club points balance.

Between today and the end of November, Chase is offering a 40% bonus to anyone who converts at least 1,000 Ultimate Rewards Points into Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points, but while this is a slightly better deal than the last time I recall Chase offering a bonus for Flying Club conversions, this is still a deal which homes with a health warning.

How & when is this a good deal?

Let’s get two very important things out of the way first:

Firstly, we’re expecting to see wholesale changes to how Virgin Atlantic prices award flights in just a couple of weeks’ time (we’re expecting the airline to move to dynamic award pricing) so unless you have some kind of inside scoop on what these changes will look like, you shouldn’t be buying any points that you don’t plan on using before 30 October 2024.

Secondly, keep in mind that in their current guise, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points are not very versatile, and awards booked with these points often attract seriously high surcharges, so unless you’ve done your due diligence and worked out the real cost of whatever awards you plan to book, you shouldn’t be buying points in this sale.

With those two warnings out of the way, I can also point out that if you have an immediate use for any points that you generate from Ultimate Rewards, they may be able to book you a nice trip and/or save you some cash.

There are two ways I like to get value out of Virgin Atlantic points:

My favorite Virgin Atlantic partner

My favorite Virgin Atlantic partner is Japan’s ANA and that’s because you can get some truly outsized value when you use Virgin Flying Club points to book premium cabin ANA awards.

Here’s the Virgin Atlantic award chart for redemption on ANA:

Note: The mileage costs shown in the table above are for round trip travel.

In practical terms this is what the award chart means:

• New York to Tokyo: 95,000 points/170,000 points (Business Class/First Class)
• Los Angeles to Tokyo will cost 90,000 points/145,000 points
• Europe to Tokyo will cost 95,000 points/170,000 points

Those are pretty good deals in their own right, but when you factor in the Chase transfer bonus they start to look even better.

Here’s how many Ultimate Rewards Points are required for the three trips I just listed above (once you account for the 40% transfer bonus that Chase is currently offering):

• New York to Tokyo: 68,000 UR/122,000 UR (Business Class/First Class)
• Los Angeles to Tokyo: 65,000 UR/104,000 UR
• Europe to Tokyo: 68,000 UR/122,000 UR

To put things in context, the best non-stop, roundtrip Business Class fares you’ll usually find for travel between New York and Tokyo run between $4,000 and $6,000, while that same trip can be booked for just 68,000 Ultimate Rewards Points which we value at $1,020 (1.5 cents each).

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that ANA awards are getting increasingly more difficult to find (please don’t push through any transfers before you check that awards are available on dates that work for you) and you’ll have to pay some surcharges too (fortunately, these are nowhere near as bad as the surcharges that Virgin Atlantic charges on a lot of other awards).

Related: Buy Virgin Atlantic Points with a 70% bonus (0.89p or 1.48¢ each)

The one Virgin Atlantic redemption that I like

The ridiculous surcharges Virgin Atlantic adds to its award bookings make most of them a colossal waste of time, but there is one very specific redemption that’s pretty good.

Virgin Atlantic’s Premium Economy cabin is no longer as great as it one was (it was once the best Premium Economy cabin for transatlantic travel), but it can still offer good value when booked with points.

The surcharges combined with the high departure taxes out of the UK make a roundtrip Premium Economy award uneconomical, but you can book a one-way Premium Economy award out of Los Angeles for just 27,500 points and $457 in off-peak season (it goes up to 37,500 points during peak season which I try to avoid) …

… which, in terms of Ultimate Reward points, is equivalent to just 20,000 points + the taxes and fees.

It’s even cheaper (from a points perspective) if you fly from the East Coast on an off-peak season date:

17,500 Flying Club points can be had for just 12,500 Ultimate Rewards points while the 40% transfer bonus is in effect and 12,500 points + $457 isn’t a bad deal for a comfortable Premium Economy transatlantic flight.

Bottom line

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points aren’t particularly versatile (certainly not as versatile as Ultimate Rewards points), you can get hit hard for surcharges when using them, and they may well be worth a lot less than they are right now once we get into November, so it would be a terrible idea to convert Ultimate Rewards points to Virgin Atlantic points speculatively.

The best way to get a lot of value out of Virgin Atlantic points is to use them for select premium cabin bookings on ANA and for one-way Premium Economy awards departing the US for the UK on Virgin Atlantic, but the issue is finding availability.

The key here is to …

1. Make sure the awards you want to book are available before you process a points conversion.
2. Make sure that you’ve checked that the economics of transferring points and using them for flights makes sense when compared to the cash cost of a booking.
3. Make sure you use any points that you generate before 30 October 2024.

If you do all that you’re unlikely to go far wrong.