Buy Virgin Points and get up to a 70% bonus with Virgin Atlantic’s best-ever promotion

Virgin Atlantic has introduced its best-ever buy miles promotion: For a limited time, eligible Flying Club members can buy Virgin Points with an up to 70% bonus.

This latest buy points promotion from Virgin Atlantic is tiered, meaning the more Virgin Points you buy, the bigger your bonus will be. The largest bonus you can get is 70%, while the smallest bonus is 15%.

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The tiered bonus structure for buying Virgin Points as part of this deal breaks down as follows:

• Buy 5,000 to 24,000 Virgin Points, get a 15% bonus, buy for 2.78 cents per point
• Buy 25,000 to 69,000 Virgin Points, get a 20% bonus, buy for 2.33 cents per point
• Buy 70,000 to 119,000 Virgin Points, get a 40% bonus, buy for 1.95 cents per point
• Buy 120,000 to 200,000 Virgin Points, get a 60% bonus, buy for 1.7 cents per point

Even better, if you have Silver or Gold status in Flying Club your bonus is even higher:

• Buy 5,000 to 24,000 Virgin Points, get a 20% bonus, buy for 2.66 cents per point
• Buy 25,000 to 69,000 Virgin Points, get a 30% bonus, buy for 2.15 cents per point
• Buy 70,000 to 119,000 Virgin Points, get a 50% bonus, buy for 1.82 cents per point
• Buy 120,000 to 200,000 Virgin Points, get a 70% bonus, buy for 1.6 cents per point (the best per-point value)

In other words, if you’re interested in getting a full 60% bonus on the points bought (or 70% if you have Flying Club status) — you’ll need to be prepared to spend a good chunk of money.

This promotion runs through March 11, 2022. Keep in mind, too, that according to the terms and conditions, Flying Club members can purchase up to 150,000 Virgin Points per calendar year. Bonus points earned as part of this promotion don’t count towards that total. Additionally, all buy points transactions are subject to a $25 transaction fee.

Note that U.S.-registered Flying Club accounts will pay slightly more than U.K.-registered accounts for Virgin Points. As noted by One Mile at a Time, this is because Virgin Atlantic sells points to U.S. accounts at a rate of $27 per 1,000 points before the bonus. U.K. accounts pay £15 per 1,000 points, equal to roughly $20.31 at the time of writing.

Is it worth it?

Before jumping into the specifics, it’s worth mentioning that TPG doesn’t recommend buying points speculatively. In other words, if you’ve got no immediate use for the purchased points, it may not be a good idea to buy a large sum of them. That’s because airline currencies are generally a bad long-term investment — at any moment, they could be devalued with little notice.

Related: When does it make sense to buy points and miles?

However, if you’ve got a use for the points, this is a great opportunity to top up your Flying Club account balance. TPG values Virgin Points at 1.5 cents apiece. With this promotion, you can purchase points at just over the price we value them. However, you can still use it to score great deals on partner awards.

Let’s look at an example. Say you want to fly Delta One return from New York-JFK to Prague (PRG) with a friend this June. This ticket costs 100,000 Virgin points and $53.67 in taxes and fees per person. Purchasing the required 200,000 points with the 60% bonus for non-status members would cost $3,400

The total cost for two passengers, including taxes and fees, is the following:

• $3,400 — Cost of 200,000 Virgin Points
• $107.34 — Cost of taxes & fees on the award ticket
• $3,507.34 — Total cost of the award flight

The cost of a return flight in Delta One on this same route is $3,191 per person when booked directly with Delta, bringing the total to $6,382 for two passengers.

Compared to paying cash, using Virgin Points can save you a large sum — in this example, it would be a savings of just over $2,874.

Virgin Atlantic doesn’t run buy miles promotions very often. If you’ve been waiting for one, now is the time to act.

Related: Virgin Atlantic is launching a new route to America going head to head with British Airways

Bottom line

This is a nice buy miles promo from Virgin. If you’re in the market for a few extra Virgin Points, this could be a promo worth taking advantage of. However, you’ll need to buy at least 120,000 Virgin Points in order to unlock the highest 60% bonus if you don’t hold Flying Club status, or 70% bonus if you do hold status.

Keep in mind that Virgin Atlantic Flying Club is also a transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards and Citi ThankYou. In other words, you can transfer points you may already have to Virgin Points at a 1:1 ratio — no purchasing points involved.

Additional reporting by Ben Smithson.

Featured photo by Nicky Kelvin/The Points Guy.