I’ve been eyeing a trip to London. From Orlando, the options for non-stop flights are British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and the newcomer Norse. Casting a broader net, I’m not against booking a positioning flight to get to Europe, but a non-stop flight is more convenient and an 8-hour red-eye TATL is better than a sub-7-hour flight from New York.
I did a check on point.me and found that there was award availability on Virgin Atlantic in Upper Class for the MCO-LHR flight. The three options to book Virgin Atlantic award flights are Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, Delta SkyMiles and Air France/KLM Flying Blue.
If you weren’t aware, since 2022, you are able to book Virgin Atlantic flights with Flying Blue points.
Notice the difference in points required for the same Virgin Atlantic flight from Orlando to London. While Delta charges the lowest fees, their price is 3X to 5X more than other programs. Virgin Atlantic charges the fewest miles but they also pass on all of the fees. Flying Blue falls in between, with a reasonable amount of points for a $3,000 ticket and only $200 in fees.
I decided to book the flight using Flying Blue points. That’s because Flying Blue is a transfer partner with American Express, Capital One, Chase and Citi. Since all programs have instant transfers, there’s no worry about the award space disappearing before the miles hit my account.
I transferred Capital One Miles to Flying Blue because there’s a 20% bonus on transfers until the end of July. I only had to transfer 78,000 points to get the 93,500 points required to book the flight.
I logged into my Capital One account. The 20% transfer bonus is hard-coded into the website.
I needed to transfer 78,400 points to get the 94,000 Flying Blue points required for my ticket. Unlike other programs, Capital One allows you to transfer points in increments of 100. This means I’ll only have a residual balance of 80 Flying Blue points.
The transfer was instant. I logged out and back into my Flying Blue account and I had a balance of 94,080 miles. Just enough to book my award flight for 94,000 miles. Virgin Atlantic flights are bookable directly on the Flying Blue website.
Even though this flight is operated by the older A330-300, we’ve flown on it before and it’s a comfortable seat. Hopefully, I’ll be able to grab a nap for a few hours before landing in London. TATL flights are always challenging sleep-wise, so I’ll make the best of it.
It was only a few days ago when I learned you can book Virgin Atlantic flights with Flying Blue miles. I wasn’t paying attention to this development which became available after Virgin Atlantic joined the SkyTeam alliance.
Since we received a 100,000-point signup bonus for the Venture X card AND this ticket costs $3,000, I could say that’s the value I received from the sign-up bonus. But YMMV isn’t the kind of website which promotes overvaluations of sign-up bonuses.
Watch this space for my review of Upper Class on Virgin Atlantic’s A330-300.
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