Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

The Highlights

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club can offer solid value, but only in specific cases.

• Virgin adds fuel surcharges to many awards, especially on its own metal and transatlantic routes.
• ANA Business Class roundtrips between the U.S. and Japan are among the cheapest in points but require round-trip bookings and can be hard to find.
• You can transfer points from Amex, Chase, Citi, and Bilt, which makes miles easy to earn (if you have a Virgin Red account, you can transfer from Capital One as well).
• Virgin Red is a loyalty system that allows you to earn and redeem points on things beyond flights
• It is separate from Virgin Flying Club, but both earn Virgin points and can be combined when you have an account with both

What to Know About This Point System

Virgin Atlantic is a niche airline. But thanks to their partnership with Delta, they have a decent U.S. reach. If your needs match their flights (or Delta’s), there are some great values, especially on premium seats. In fact, it often costs fewer points to book a Delta flight on Virgin Atlantic (even first class) than it does directly with Delta.

The other great thing about Virgin Atlantic is they partner with the four major point systems: Amex, Citi, Chase and Bonvoy. That means you can pool your points in one place, particularly if you’re trying to use up some orphaned balances. Account creation is free and relatively easy.

Occasionally their cards have special offers, which are worthwhile if you pair them with some Citi or Amex points. But Virgin Atlantic tends to be more of a “point booking” portal than a “point accumulation” partner.

How to Redeem

Redeem for Flights

The best way to redeem your Virgin Atlantic points is for flights on Virgin or one of its many partners. Like many airlines, Virgin now uses dynamic pricing instead of a fixed award chart, so you’ll find both excellent and poor redemptions depending on route and timing.

To search for reward flights:

• Log in to your Virgin Atlantic account
• Toggle “Search for Rewards Flights” above the search bar
• View results displayed by week
• Check surcharge amounts – Virgin flights often include high surcharges, though these were reduced after the 2024 program overhaul

Most of Virgin’s best sweet spots come from partner redemptions. These are generally distance-based or region-based and vary by airline. To view the charts:

• Visit Virgin’s partner page
• Select the partner airline you’re interested in
• Scroll to the “Spend Virgin Points” section to see award costs with each airline

Hotels, Cars, and Other Redemption Options

Virgin Red promotes itself as a program that lets you use Virgin points across the entire Virgin Group. You can redeem points for stays at Virgin Hotels, voyages on Virgin Voyages, bottles from Virgin Wines, and other travel or entertainment experiences. These redemptions typically give you only a 0.5–1 cent per point value, which isn’t ideal for maximizing rewards.

Even though the options are broad, we still recommend saving your points for airfare, where you can get far better value from. If you want to explore everything you can book with Virgin Red points, click here.

Visit Virgin Atlantic Flying Club