The Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Miles Booster Promotion is now live again until the 8th March. WooHoo. My favourite deal. This is a fab way to buy some extra miles at a great rate. You can boost (ie buy extra) your miles on Virgin flights taken in the last 6 months or ones booked in the future.
Did you boost your miles in the October promotion? When is it worth buying miles and what happens to those boosted miles if you cancel your flight?
What is Miles Booster ? The latest promotion allowed you to buy single, double or triple miles flown. This is on flights paid for with money, reward flights or as part of a package i.e. with Virgin Holidays. (Remember to get your 7% Flying Club discount on Virgin Holidays packages by the way). Here’s an example. New York basic economy return is London to New York return trip earns you 6,916 miles – If you have purchased the flight. No miles earned if you redeem a reward flight.
With Miles Booster – You get a staggered bonus with the amount of miles you boost. You can single boost with a 20% – so you can buy an extra 8299 miles for £69.16. Or double boost with a 30% bonus – So an extra 17981 miles for £138.32. Or triple boost with an extra 30% bonus so an extra 29k miles for £207.
And you can do this WITH REWARD FLIGHT BOOKINGS.
So a return trip for 2 to say Las Vegas would earn you 10,482 miles. Triple boost the miles for £314 and get an additional 44,024 miles. So one trip to Vegas plus £314 and you’ve got nearly 55,000 miles.
If your Vegas trip was a reward flight then you can still get 44k miles for £314. This is a really good price. Have a look at how miles experts headforpoints and godsavethepoints value Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles.
So what can you do with these extra miles to make them worth buying? Well our fab use of Virgin Miles for our New York trip going out Premium Economy and returning Upper Class on the new A350 would have cost £3,475 in cash each. We paid £567 in taxes and fees plus 55,000 Flying club Miles. So look at what you are planning on doing anyway and see if buying those extra miles makes sense.
To upgrade our Premium Economy Las Vegas flights to Upper Class it’s 37,500 miles each way. We have enough miles to do this (just hoping for availability!) But if we didn’t have enough then we would definitely be happy paying £300 for the miles to do this on the way back – an 11 hour night flight – thousands less than the cash price.
What happens if you cancel your reward flight booking?
You would think that you get a refund (maybe less an admin fee) for the Miles Booster right? Well actually No. Booking reward flights comes with the almost priceless benefit of cancellations for £30pp. If you cancel the reward flight you have the choice of a refund of the Miles Boosted OR just keep them, no refund, no miles returned. You still receive them when you would have had you have taken the flights.
So what does this mean? Well obviously you wouldn’t book reward flights, boost the miles and cancel the flights just to be able to buy the miles at a great price. Virgin would surely put an end to this benefit very quickly. It does mean though that there is a silver lining should you have to cancel your reward flights.
Another example of Virgins excellent customer focused service and a million miles away from British Airways efforts – I only got a refund of pre-booked seats on a cancelled flight AFTER I made a court claim with the help of ThisIsMoney! Have a read of our British Airways series , starting with what British Airways do well. (It’s a little longer than you may expect)
Also keep these guides handy – have a read when you book – be prepared for flight cancellations and delays and really important need to knows if you are booking flights and accommodation separately.
You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for instant post alerts, deals and shares and do subscribe for weekly notifications for new articles with ways to help you Spend Smarter and Travel Smarter.
The post Virgin Miles Booster – the best Air Miles deal? appeared first on Mind over Money Matters.