How to use Virgin Atlantic Flying Club to book nearly free flights to Europe and beyond

You’ve probably heard of Virgin Atlantic, but if you’re not a frequent traveler (or even if you are), you may not have flown the airline. Given it’s a London-based carrier, you may not think it’s an airline that will play heavily into your travel rewards strategy. But that’s far from the truth, even if you’re based in the US.

In fact, you can use Virgin Atlantic to get some of the sweetest deals in award travel. The airline has a variety of partnerships that let you book flights all over the world, including domestic flights on Delta Air Lines.

Here’s what you need to know about Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, including how to earn and redeem miles with the loyalty program.

What is Virgin Atlantic Flying Club?

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club is Virgin Atlantic’s loyalty program. The London-based carrier is a part of the SkyTeam alliance, which means you can earn and redeem Virgin points with other airlines like Delta and Aeromexico.

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club accounts can also be linked to Virgin Red, which is the loyalty program for the larger group of Virgin companies. You can earn and redeem points with Virgin Red on Virgin Voyages, Virgin Hotels and other Virgin brands.

How to earn Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points

Virgin Atlantic makes earning points a simple task, thanks to the myriad reward-earning activities. From flying to shopping to train rides, you’ve got loads of options. But as is often the case, the easiest way to rack up rewards is with a good travel credit card strategy.

Earn Virgin points when you fly

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club is an airline loyalty program at its core, so you can earn Virgin points each time you buy a ticket on Virgin Atlantic or its partners.

When you fly with Virgin Atlantic, the number of points you’ll earn depends on a few factors like fare class and your elite status tier. Virgin Atlantic offers an “earning calculator” that you can use to estimate your points windfall.

Plus, as a member of the SkyTeam airline alliance, you can opt to earn Virgin points when flying with other SkyTeam airlines. This includes Aeromexico, Air France, Delta, KLM and many more. Virgin Atlantic also partners with a handful of other airlines outside of SkyTeam, including All Nippon Airways (ANA), Hawaiian Airlines and Singapore Airlines.

The number of points you’ll earn on partner flights depends on the fare class you book and how long your flight is. You can view earning rates for each partner on Virgin Atlantic’s website.

As an example, a flight from Chicago-O’Hare (ORD) to Mexico City (MEX) on Aeromexico in Premier class earns 3,372 Virgin points. This is because the flight is flight is 1,686 miles long and all Premier class tickets earn 200% miles flown when credited to Virgin Atlantic.

If you pay for travel with Virgin Atlantic or its partners regularly, this can be an easy way to rack up points.

Earn Virgin points with travel credit cards

Virgin Atlantic has two of its own credit cards, though neither are currently accepting applications. Fortunately, the airline partners with multiple transferable rewards programs.

If you’re looking for a new credit card to earn travel rewards with, you might consider opening a card that earns Chase Ultimate Rewards points. Two of our favorite Chase cards are currently offering higher than usual bonus offers:

All programs convert a 1:1 ratio, so transferring 1,000 points will get you 1,000 Virgin points. However, Virgin Atlantic frequently benefits from transfer bonuses (often up to 30%) with programs such as American Express and Capital One. So, if you time your transfers right, you might end up with extra points.

Stay with hotel partners

You can earn Virgin points for hotel stays at select properties. The best way to go about this is by booking your stay with Rocketmiles, a reservation platform that awards non-hotel rewards for hotel nights. Earning rates vary between 500 and 10,000 points per night.

You can also book directly with hotels and elect to earn Virgin points instead of hotel points. For example, you’ll earn the following with major hotel chains.

You can even transfer your hotel points to Virgin Atlantic, but the conversion rate is poor, making it almost always a bad idea. The only currency worth transferring is Marriott points, which convert at a 3:1 ratio. However, you’ll receive a 5,000-point bonus when transferring in increments of 60,000 points. This means you’ll get 25,000 Virgin points when you transfer 60,000 Marriott points.

Book travel with other travel partners

You don’t have to buy a plane ticket, book a hotel or swipe a rewards credit card to earn loads of Virgin points. Virgin Atlantic has a variety of travel partners that give you the ability to earn accrue points., including:

How to redeem Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points

When it comes to redeeming Virgin points, you’ve got plenty of choices. But as you’ll see, only a couple of options are worth considering. The rest give you a paltry return for your hard-earned rewards.

Book award flights with Virgin Atlantic and its partners

The best use way to redeem your Virgin points is airfare. Virgin Atlantic has surprisingly attractive prices between the US and Europe, starting at just 10,000 points one way. However, you’ll usually pay over $200 in taxes and fees — and sometimes over $700 one way when booking a premium cabin.

Here are the off-peak and peak prices for everywhere Virgin Atlantic flies. All prices are for round trip, so a one-way flight will cost half the amount shown. You can view peak and off-peak dates on the airline’s website.

Virgin points can also be incredible when redeeming for flights on Virgin Atlantic’s partner airlines. The airline assigns a unique award chart to certain partners. For example, here’s what you’ll pay when booking a one-way Delta flight with Virgin points:

Unfortunately, Virgin Atlantic doesn’t let you book flights with all its partners online. Only Air France/KLM, China Airlines, Delta, Korean Air, Middle East Airlines and Xiamen Air can be booked without phoning in.

Virgin Atlantic has some excellent uses, even if they’re not always the easiest to book. For example, you can:

Points and money redemptions

If you don’t have enough points for an award redemption — or if you simply don’t want to burn through your points as quickly — you can choose to split your payment between points and money. Run the numbers before you do this, though, since it may provide less value than redeeming points for an award flight.

Upgrade your seat on a Virgin Atlantic flight

When flying on Virgin Atlantic, you can upgrade your flight entirely with points. But the price you pay is dependent on your route. Here’s what you’ll pay when upgrading a flight between the US and the UK:

That looks like a lot of points, but just remember that an Upper Class seat can easily cost thousands more than an Economy Classic seat. Depending on the cash price of the ticket, this could be an excellent use of Virgin points.

Convert Virgin points to hotel points

Just as you can transfer hotel points to Virgin Atlantic, you can also transfer the other way. For example, you can:

This isn’t generally a good deal, as hotel points are often worth less than airline miles. However, there may be rare exceptions where you need to top off your account to have enough points for a specific hotel stay.

Redeem your Virgin points for other things

There are other random redemptions that someone with points to burn may find attractive. Other options are yawn-worthy. As an example, you can:

What you need to know about Virgin Atlantic elite status

Virgin Atlantic offers three membership levels.

You’ll earn Tier Points when you purchase an eligible Virgin Atlantic flight. Depending on your status level, you’ll get perks like priority check-in, Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse (airport lounge) access, priority boarding and more.

Plus, Virgin Atlantic elite status also unlocks SkyTeam elite status. Flying Club Silver members will receive SkyTeam Elite, while Flying Club Gold members will receive SkyTeam Elite Plus.

SkyTeam Elite Plus includes preferred seat selection, extra baggage allowance, SkyTeam airport lounge access and more when you fly with other SkyTeam airlines and add your Flying Club number to your ticket.

Have elite status with another airline? You might be able to request a status match if you have an upcoming flight with Virgin Atlantic. Check out our full guide to airline elite status matches and challenges for more info.

How much are Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points worth?

Virgin points don’t have a fixed value when redeemed for flights. The return you’ll get for them depends on how you use them. Still, frequent flyer website The Points Guy values Virgin points at 1.5 cents each. We agree with this relatively high valuation, thanks to the plethora of high-value redemption options.

Bottom line

Virgin Atlantic is worth getting to know, given its excellent award prices on several partner airlines. It also offers incredibly cheap award flights to Europe, which can be worth booking despite relatively high fees.

Plus, Virgin Atlantic is a transfer partner of just about every major transferable credit card rewards currency. The ease in which you can earn Virgin points makes the program uniquely valuable.

Looking for a travel credit card? Find out which cards CNN Underscored Money chose as the best travel credit cards currently available.