Virgin Atlantic offers a very interesting and often-overlooked opportunity that allows customers to purchase additional Flying Club miles at prices that vary from fairly decent to excellent.

This comes via a scheme called Miles Booster and can be used by anyone who has a future Virgin Atlantic flight booked or has flown with them in the last six months. This is available for both cash and miles redemption bookings.

 

If you’re new to the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club frequent flyer program, check out my complete guide to the scheme here. You’ll find info on the various different ways to earn Virgin miles, where you can spend them and more.

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How does it work?

Virgin is essentially allowing you to purchase Flying Club miles at 1p apiece.

How many miles you can buy depends on the distance of your forthcoming/past flight with them.

Let me explain:

Virgin takes the actual flown distance (base miles) for your flight and will allow you to purchase up to double that amount – at 1p per mile – using Miles Booster.

Example 1 – (distances based on return flights)

New York

Boost with the flown miles:
Get an extra 6,916 miles for £69.16

Or double the flown miles:
Get an extra 13,832 miles for £138.32

Example 2

Barbados

Boost with the flown miles:
Get an extra 8,420 miles for £84.20

Or double the flown miles:
Get an extra 16,840 miles for £168.40

Get an extra 30% bonus miles

Many customers received emails on Friday with details of a 30% bonus when using Miles Booster.

Note: It does seem to be a targeted promotion though as there is no mention of it on the Virgin website.

Until midnight 9th March, you’ll receive a bonus 30% miles on top of your boost.

This is a very good deal as I’ll explain below.

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Is this a good deal?

I don’t normally recommend purchasing miles directly from airlines unless there’s an extraordinary promotion running or you have an immediate use for them that adds up cost-wise.

That’s been my policy with British Airways offers in the past and also normally applies to Virgin’s miles purchasing scheme too.

If you went to purchase 17,000 miles on the Virgin website, you’ll see the following:

 

Those 17,000 miles will cost you £270, or 1.58p per mile. Which isn’t very good at all.

That same 17,000 miles would cost you just £170 if purchased via Miles Booster! There may well be times that you decide paying 1p per mile to top up your Virgin account is a good deal.

If however, you are eligible for the 30% bonus, the maths becomes even more compelling.

Taking the earlier Barbados example, you can ordinarily purchase 16,840 miles for £168.40. When you include the 30% bonus that would become 21,892 miles for £168.40, or just 0.76p per mile!

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How to boost your miles

Once you’ve booked your flight, you can choose to boost online through your Flying Club profile.

You can also boost miles on flights you’ve already flown. This can only be done on the phone via the Virgin Atlantic Customer Service Centre team though.

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Is there anything else you should know?

Also bear in mind:

1. Purchase of miles through Miles Booster can be made from the time of flight booking until the date of the first sector of the flight in the itinerary.
2. Miles purchased via Miles Booster will be credited to the member’s Flying Club account within 72 hours of the originally scheduled date of the first sector of the flight in the itinerary. For retrospective purchases, miles will be credited within 72 hours of the transaction being made.
3. If the itinerary associated with the Miles Booster purchase is changed or the customer does not take the flight, payment is still taken at the point of sale of the Miles Booster purchase and the miles will be credited to the member’s Flying Club account within 72 hours after the originally scheduled date of the first sector of the flight in the itinerary.

Virgin Atlantic will normally limit you to purchasing or being gifted a maximum of 100,000 Flying Club miles per calendar year. Positively, miles earned via Miles Booster purchases do NOT count towards that cap.

There is no limit to the number of miles that a member can earn via purchase(s) of Miles Booster.

You can view the full “small print” on this page here.

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Verdict

Miles Booster is one of those useful tricks worth being aware of. The ability to purchase miles at just 1p per mile ‘year-round’ is a solid offer.

If you can take advantage of the 30% bonus, it becomes an even better deal and is an excellent way of topping up your Virgin account. Remembering that a return trip to New York off-peak costs just 20,000 miles – being able to purchase 21,000 miles for roughly £170 is a great deal.

The Miles Booster page on the Virgin website can be found here

Would you use the Virgin Miles Booster to buy miles at these prices?