Is Virgin America a terrible program for value?
 

Greetings all
I recently had all my points expire in my Elevate account
Then looked and considered flying them again since the new non expiring policy went into effect.
Question: I was trying to determine how much a free ticket in First Class would cost to redeem?The roundtrip I selected said 140,000 plus points :eek:
Holy toledo does this make VA the worst frequent flyer program in history for value or do I need an education in their program?

I venture to say at one point per dollar on their Visa Card I would need
140,000 dollars in spending to earn a rroundtrip ticket.Am I not getting something here?Thanks for the feedback

You can always check the points value to book a flight on the website, just by toggling between having the fare display in points or dollars.

Regular usage of the card earns points at a one-for-one rate. If you utilize it for Virgin travel, however, you earn 3 points per dollar, which makes a total of 8 points per dollar if you add in the 5 points you already get from your Elevate account.

How did you miss all of the email advisories about the upcoming expiration date, so you could have just bought something in the Red Store to re-up the date?

I started flying them before Elevate was launched. I loved the brand and hated the program.It would be awesome if Virgin Atlantic could partner up with them too.I have been so busy flying with One World as an Exec Plat
and in so many other Star Alliance and various hotel and dining programs I got distracted........Do you thing the cc and flying VA even come close to the value with the Legacy Carrier programs overall?

Elevate points have a calculated value of around $0.0215 each and 'cost' around $0.125-$0.2 each. That's approx 10-17% redemption (if my elementary school-level math skills are correct).

So (assuming that average prices remain constant), you'd get a free flight after 6-10 flights...

FYI - the FAQ thread contains some good info on redemption values etc.

I've taken a total of ten paid flights on VX. Tomorrow I'll by flying my fifth VX award segment. VX is great for one-way and short-distance awards (all of my award flights have been short-distance), especially when the point level corresponds to a cheap fare. I've earned my points from the paid flights, the Visa signup bonus, and points earned using the Visa for VX ticket, upgrade, and RED purchases (I don't use it for anything else, which is fine since there's no annual fee).

Now, eleVAte is a fairly primitive program overall. There are a few threads discussing its relative merits compared with the legacies' programs, in which you can read my gripes. :p But I'd say I've gotten decent traction out of my points thus far. ^

As always, YMMV.

Easy question: the answer is yes. It doesn't even come close to even the worst of the legacy progams.

Yes, it's a terrible program if you expect to get F flights for free. Basically, it's a watered-down version of WN's Rapid Rewards (which itself is about to be watered down).

But then again, the idea that "we get you to fly on our crap airline by occasionally letting you fly on a good airline in first class" is a completely stupid way to run an airline loyalty program- you're not encouraging loyalty to your product per se. Instead, you're bribing people to suffer you by shoveling miles at your customers, and the incentives are all out of whack- someone spending $99 on JFK-LAX months in advance on most airlines gets MORE return in "loyalty" than someone spending $300 on last-minute LAX-SFO in Y (and that first person might have gotten a free upgrade to J/F on their discount fare, to boot). On VX, the customer who spent more gets more. If I owned an airline and was designing a loyalty program, I'd make it similar to VX or what DJ does (DJ is similar to VX, except they have elite levels where you can get better points multipliers if you fly them more).

Good post eponymous_coward
So would I except I might not have enough customers so i would be forced to discount heavily with 50% off sales.Rinse and repeat.
It is the program and fares that drives the business so i am less price sensetive and more brand loyal.I frequently pay more for my flights on American as an Executive Platinum.I am fine with that as the program is fantastic.
Take away Americans richly rewarding program and I would be gone buying product and value.Virgin can't live in a world of its own with an poor value proposistion.How long since VA hit the ground did it take these rocket scientists to figure out expiring points is a sure way to kill loyalty?
How many times did customers have to give them the words of reality before they got it ?
Virgin Atlantic program on the other hand is richly rewarding though the partner network very weak.Every time I redeem and find myself satisfied with a program and value I am far more likely to do all my business with that program even if they may have limited properties or in the case of an airline limited routes/non stops.......Especially Virgin

Well, you can earn free flights on Virgin Atlantic by flying on VX, now. You have a choice of earning VX points or Velocity miles, and Velocity miles can be used for flying Virgin Atlantic. I've been trying to figure out how that works out compared to flying legacies with the intent to fly VS, but the Velocity site has very limited info about redeeming for VS (it only shows a couple of examples).

Any chance retroactively? That'd be nice then, as once VX pulls out of SNA on 5/26 (which is effectively Friday the 21st for me), I won't be taking them any longer, and I'll be stuck with ~4500 points by then.

I guess since I have enough now for a MC ticket SFO-SNA I should just use one of those, but it'd be nice to take the remaining points and do something with them (I'd even give 'em away, just so's they don't wind up going to waste).

Can't imagine that you could do it retroactively. No other airline allows such a thing, that I know of.

Everything has a cost. VX has invested their costs in improving their F and Y product. AA flies 25 year old planes on JFK-LAX, puts new covers on their old J recliners, and gives customers a great deal in the form of a loyalty program as the way they invest their costs.

I am not convinced that VX's route is the wrong way to go. It's not going to be popular with FTers, since as a subset of the FF crowd, we're concentrating on how to turn our MRs into cheap J upgrades to Europe and miles into RTW trips, but I think WN is a good example of an LCC coming in with a model that didn't involve a lot of what other airlines did, and it worked out for them. I think VX F is what you'd get if you applied LCC principles to F- lower pricing, less ways to game the system to get into it, nothing handed out for free. Their FF product I am less impressed with, but I still don't think it's the wrong approach. Maybe people would rather fly an airline with a better F and Y experience and forfeit some miles.

... people like me, for example, who only got DL FO last year going to SLC on segments and will hardly rack up the miles necessary to burn 'em for anything substantial.

A quick ramble :)
 

Thanks for your thoughts
Yes the planes are newer does that make the experience lesser on a legacy carrier with older planes?
I understand what you are saying in principal and you certainly have an interesting post/thought process.
If Virgin had a wow experience I think they could keep the lower value.Don't get me wrong i respect much of what they are doing but its not that great at the end of the day. I fly first or business class in a 767 coast to coast in a very good comfortable seat with pre boarding with a good meal (sometimes) and beverage service.

Also receive great value in a program for earning and redeeming on world class carriers. Is that really an incomparable experience just because a smaller aircraft at Virgin is new?Does Virgin believe they are superior in all other aspects of the experience?What they have on the table is weak IMO unless they get as big as Jet Blue with many routes.They aren't going to get the lions share of customers till they up the bar and make the program far more compelling.Not that I see any promise as it took this long for these program rocket scientists to abolish expiring miles :rolleyes:

I also have great lounges to use globally with One World.Beacuse a small plane is newer they have the right to drop value indefinately?I have flown Virgin America in first it wasn't great it was satisfactory.And though new the seat was not that comfortable despite how nice the leather looked
I actually thought their coach product was a far better value.
If international ownership brought any business culture with them it appears to be stinginess as if no other programs compete in the marketplace
Imagine if there were no other programs were competing how bad their program offering would be.Its pretty thin now :eek:

(emphasis mine). This should have been at the top of your message, so that we could have given the rest of it the credibility it deserves.

Straw man alert. That was not his argument. Not once did he mention newer planes.

Many people seem to think they do have a wow experience. It's enough for me to pay 3x over other airlines for their F product transcon. Others are, too.

And there's the tearing down of the straw man. :-)

Unless you are solely comparing FF programs, it doesn't make sense to compare routes. It makes more sense to compare on a route-by-route basis. VX doesn't care if AA beats them RDU-ORD.

It's worth pointing out that there was never a period of time when you had no choice but to let your miles be abolished if you didn't use them. You didn't say that there was, but I point it out for the sake of others who might be reading this (and possibly you, if you didn't realize).

You already tore down that straw man

I give you the benefit of the doubt, but my (and others') opinion differs. Otherwise, why would we be paying 3x more than other airlines for F? I give you this benefit of the doubt, despite your making up stories about foreign ownership. Read the FAQ.

Their coach product is okay, but I wouldn't call it a great value. Until the fleetwide WiFi, B6 had a much better coach product. B6 coach is still more comfortable, but without the WiFi, I'd rather be on VX.