Virgin Atlantic Amex
 

I had a flyer for this yesterday as a current VA mastercard holder. They're dumping that for miles after December. The new Amex is offering the same 2 miles per GBP as the MC but with 4 miles per GBP until Dec and 4 miles for Virgin spend (6 until Dec).

There's a 10k bonus for first spend as well.

The fee is 115gbp a year but no charge until the normal renewal.

I'll switch and probably cancel on renewal.

Unless I can get it free as a Centurion, any thoughts?

My thoughts are ...

Get the card and, in December, buy a flexible VS ticket for as much as your credit limit can afford. (Limit is £10k - you buy a £10k VS ticket).

A £10k VS ticket will get you 60,000 VS Miles. When you refund the ticket in January, I bet they will only remove 40,000 VS Miles. You will be 20k up!

My version would be cancel the card in between getting the 60k miles and cancelling the ticket. Then in theory they wouldn't take any of the miles away!

60,000 miles for nothing :)

Unlikely, I would think.

Although branded as AmEx, the new card is isssued by MBNA.

I made a mistake in the original posting, the MC miles stop being earned in Dec but the higher earning rates run until July 2007, for the first 20,000gbp.

I'll try and spend 20k before my renewal date and then consider the issue.

According to the VA website, for the Virgin Atlantic Black Card (I guess they couldn't call it a Black Amex), you get:

# 2 Flying Club miles for every £1 spent
# 4 Flying Club miles for every £1 spent direct with Virgin
# 6,000 bonus Flying Club miles upon first spend
# a companion voucher for a full fare ticket when you spend over £7,500

...the annual cost is £115.

Not sure it's all that good compared with what you get with BA, using Tesco & Amex Prem Plus.

Clearly a better offer for existing holders.