Well my math is off and I'm coming up just shy of gold on my status points. Does anyone know if Virgin America rounds up or offers some other way to reach gold when you're this close?

Very frustrating trying to track status points.

Sorry! Wish I knew the answer to assist a fellow Gold. Was in similar situation last year. Studied hard and fast how to maximize credit card points and what was needed to get Gold again. Did quick trip SFO-Dallas did the trick and some (just in case). Turns out work needed me to go to Boston over the holidays and I gladly went as well.

Personally, I think if you were at 49,892-ish someone at VX may have the Christmas Spririt and give it to you.

Good Luck

Last year I had 49xxx (i forget exactly). I emailed them in early January and got Gold.

Also, its an informal rule, but if you take a flight in the ~7 calendar days of 2016, those points count towards your 2015 status if it would boost you to gold.

.....

Not strictly analogous, but I basically got comped into Silver due to year-end lag this past year. I think the underlying logic is that it makes more sense to kick you up a notch in status than to have you be able to obtain status the next year for far less (and/or have far more carry-forward points) if you've got the premium card (e.g. had I not cleared into Silver I would have had about 19,000 points ready to count towards status for 2015...meaning that after credit card status points I would have gotten Gold after spending only about $3000). If you're at 49k and have the relevant card, they can either give you Gold outright and call it a day...or potentially have to give you Gold after you spend $1200 on VX and $30k on the credit card (giving you that status for close to two years if you spin it up right quick). I suspect VX would rather just give someone who is close in on status Gold (and thus discharge those nearly 30k points of "status liability", if you will) as opposed to not doing so and then having you get close to a second year free.

Hmm.. I would definitely do this if I knew it would work. I am close to reaching Gold for the fourth year in a row (although not as close as you're all talking about) and would really like to keep it.

I had a somewhat similar situation. I messed up my base fare calculation and ended up with 19,955 points. I called to ask if there was a status exception (noting that I had just paid $329 for an FLL-SFO upgrade that wasn't earning status points), and while on hold I saw my status points jumped to 20,205.

I'm still not sure what caused the change but when the rep came back on the phone they said they were showing me to have over 20k points and that my silver status was good to go for 2016.

If you've got the $149 CC, "missing" Gold for a year by a narrow margin may have advantages if you regularly get in the high-40s in terms of status points per year, since the 20k+ points above silver will carry forward (and act as a buffer for future years) and you'll make status after filling in the gap (which may not take long if you can run a lot of spend over the CC in the interim...28k roll-over points plus 15k from the CC means you'll have Gold back after spending only about $1200, and the resulting 28k buffer means you've got "wiggle room" for quite a while).