Virgin Atlantic Amex 65,000 Bonus Miles Offer Back

Virgin Atlantic has relaunched a bonus offer on the Bank of America American Express card with the potential to earn new cardholders up to 65,000 bonus Flying Club miles when they meet certain spend requirements. We haven’t seen a bonus this high on the card since last spring, and this beats the usual 50,000-mile bonus for getting this card–the extra 15,000 miles from the anniversary bonus when you meet the spending requirements.

Here is the application link, and the details:

•20,000 bonus miles after your first purchase
•25,000 additional bonus miles after you spend at least $2,500 in qualifying purchases in the first 90 days
•15,000 Anniversary bonus miles after qualifying purchases–you get 7,500 miles by spending $15,000 within the year, and 7,500 more if you hit a threshold of $25,000 in spend.
•5,000 bonus miles when adding two additional Cardmembers
•1.5 miles for every $1 spent on purchases
•3 miles per $1 spent directly with Virgin Atlantic
•Tier points that help you ascend to or maintain Silver or Gold status (note: you can only earn two Tier points per month)
•$90 annual fee, not waived
•1% foreign transaction fee

Because you have to hit $25,000 in spending on the card to earn the extra 15,000 points, if I were to get this card, I might actually just do so for the 50,000 miles you get for making $2,500 in purchases and adding two cardholders.

50,000 Virgin miles aren’t actually that much, but according to the Flying Club chart, it’s almost enough to get you from Boston, New York or DC to London roundtrip in Premium Economy, which costs 55,000 miles along with an $810 co-pay for roundtrip, though sometimes that can be less, as is the case here:

It’s also enough for one-way in Upper Class from the US along with a co-pay, and while the redemption chart lists the co-pay on Upper Class tickets as $1,300 roundtrip, for one-way it can actually be much lower depending on which direction you’re flying. For instance, this one-way award from New York to London only has a co-pay of $416:

Virgin Atlantic also has plenty of airline partners you can also use these miles on, including its US partner, Virgin America, as well as Air China, Air New Zealand, ANA, BMI, Gulf Air, Jet Airways, Hawaiian Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, SAS, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways, US Airways (for now) and Virgin Australia.

You can also transfer Virgin Atlantic miles to Hilton at a 1:2 ratio, so that 50,000-mile bonus equates to 100,000 Hilton HHonors points, which you’ll need more of if you want to stay at any aspiration Hilton properties after the imminent devaluation.

Although the $90 annual fee isn’t waived, those 50,000 miles could still be worth it to you, especially if you know you have a lot of spending coming up and want to consolidate it on one card to score those extra 15,000 anniversary miles. Plus, since it’s a Bank of America card, if you’ve been hitting Chase or Citi hard for bonuses lately and need to wait a while before your next app-o-rama, this might be a good option to score a decent bonus in the meantime.

Hat tip: Miles Abound.

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