Virgin Air Miles - worth it?

[redscouse2]

We love air miles , definitely wouldn’t have been able to visit in 2016 and 2018 without them ! Enables us to stay onsite and pay under £1000 for 3 return flights in august school holidays 😎

[Sparky]

Will be interested to hear what time of year you all got these great deals... flown a lot with work and have nearly 300k miles. You maybe able to get a couple of UC tickets but the tax is huge, is that because it’s peak time...?

Looked at using them this year but managed to get economy virgin flights for £480 in July and couldn’t face spending miles when the tickets were that cheap.

[princess-momo]

i was going to use m+m but after looking at the prices of Virgins flights just now! ouch

[captbnut]

I'm interested to read this. I got the impression that BA didn't have many reward flights in August so it wasn't worth changing Clubcard to Avios. If Virgin has more availability then they are an option again.

Do these flights come out 11 months in advance like a normal flight? Is there any way to search for reward flights specifically?

[ChrisS]

We were very lucky to get 'right place/time' return UC reward seats, out Nov 2016, back May 2017 (afore VA set up the new site and made changes to reward seats), especially lucky as our May 2017 had literally only been placed on the system when I grabbed it, cost £424pp of taxes and fees plus 100k of miles apiece. Due to nigh on 6 months atween flights I had to book as two separate flights to acquire reward seats, VA were superb, linked flights to ensure we only paid T&Fs as if we'd booked a return from the outset - linking saved us £160pp against VA's carrier imposed fees. Unfortunately they now refuse to link, which tends to mean a single US to UK has high carrier imposed fees.

In August 2017 I booked our Nov to May PE flights (£687pp) via LastMinute during a VA sale, LM were £120 cheaper than VA. Unfortunately there were no off peak reward seats to be had, no matter how much I played around with dates. It was pointless paying via M&M with the £160pp LM cheaper fare.

I'll research for this Nov using mock dates against a single/return PE option, since rewards, when found, now have a 'from' mileage rate it'll be interesting to see (if I can find anything) the required miles.

[Stevelovesfl]

Originally Posted by captbnut

I'm interested to read this. I got the impression that BA didn't have many reward flights in August so it wasn't worth changing Clubcard to Avios. If Virgin has more availability then they are an option again.

Do these flights come out 11 months in advance like a normal flight? Is there any way to search for reward flights specifically?

See more...

BA is 355 days out and Virgin is ~330 days out. I'd say there is more availability with BA and it has more options. Use Avios.com to search BA seats as I find it easier. If flying economy though Virgin's taxes are cheaper ~£230 vs ~£330.

If you have miles in both you can book out with Virgin and back with BA for example to give you more of getting the dates you want.

Remember your miles cost you money, eg convert from Tesco to air miles, since you could have bought something else with your Tesco CC vouchers. I'd say they are worth ~2x so if converting £100 in Tesco to Avios those 24k Avios cost you £200 perhaps more if you plan to use Hotels.com. Similary when you spend on your credit card you are buying the miles as you could have used a cash back card. Food for thought...

[Burgmeister]

Originally Posted by Stevelovesfl

Use Avios.com to search BA seats as I find it easier.

See more...

That website is closing avios/gb/en_gb/about...e_notification

[a11mark]

Definatly worth it, we collect miles through tesco, virgin mastercard and shops away.