Hi miklcct,
looks like you’re not far from me!
in short - it’s a very subjective question, depending not only on the routes available, but your spending habits. And your appetite for connecting flights, I would say.
with VS (virgin) points, you have access to the KLM and Air France network too, which could prove helpful.
However, from personal experience specifically with the LHR-HKG route, I would advise that your best value will be in either using VS points to book a premium economy ticket, or purchasing a cash/revenue premium economy ticket, then using a virgin Atlantic credit car to ‘voucher’ to upgrade this to business class.
of course, I don’t know your preferences for cabin of travel, food and drink, etc.
personally I’m 6’1”, legroom is sometimes an issue depending on the carrier and I get *really* twitchy on economy flights over 3 1/2 hours. Business/First is a must for me.
In terms of how you earn VS points, this comes down to your appetites for fees and your spending habits. A short time ago, Virgin Money were offering the Virgin Rewards+ credit card with a 30,000 signup (and minimum spend) bonus, for a £165 first year fee. That’s now gone and is 15,000 - but could come up in the next 12 months.
if memory serves, that puts you a good way towards the points for a PE class ticket to hkg on off-peak dates ( + ££ for taxes and fees).
On the free version of the card, the sign up bonus is much smaller.
Apart from virgin red - another good source for point collection partners would be going to Google and searching ‘Virgin Shops Away UK’. That’s probably quite important, as there are UK, USA, HKG etc versions of the site.
Every account may show slightly different earning rates with different partners. But as a day to day example, you can earn a lot of points (8 per £1 sometimes) with grocery shops at Morrisons or CoOp.
At the end of the day, as I said before it’s all subjective, but all the best going forward on your points journey! I started about 4 years ago and felt late to the game then, so many opportunities with tesco clubcard etc passed by without me even knowing this kind of thing could have been so lucrative.
If you can stomach connections to HKG you have, in my opinion, even better possibilities to redeem VS points with ANA airlines to Japan and beyond.
Feel free to drop me a DM if I can be of any further help.
- Tofino