Raffles

I was embargoed until 2pm but as it is now 2.09 .....

http://discoverflyingclub.virginatlantic.com/

CommanderB

Well.... thats a lot to digest....

craigthemif

No award chart, but a quick play around with things suggests that Economy and Premium Economy awards become cheaper, with Upper Class increasing substantially in price on peak dates. Given surcharges, it's no great surprise that VS are happy to give away award seats in Y - they already do the 50% award sale at regular intervals...

US West Coast gets hammered the worst. Understandable because of the massive demand for those destinations, but still painful. There's also a mistake on current pricing of Hong Kong, so I'm not quite sure what's going on there.

Cue massive rush to book Upper Class awards before edit: 16 January, 2017...

snevillio

Lets hope this all heralds in a new search and booking engine which includes partner airlines...

craigthemif

This is a more helpful link for FTers...

http://discoverflyingclub.virginatla...pending-uk.pdf

36902BRF

Is 11/13/16 or 1/16/17? The footnote on the changes mentions standard (off-peak) reward flights are bookable starting 1/16/17. EDIT thanks to the PDF above it is pretty clear the new award costs are effective 1/16/17: "The below reward flights are bookable from 16 January 2017. Our year round
reward flights can still be booked until 15 January 2017."

I figured this was coming and have burned up a fair amount of VS points in the last six months so this hurts less than it could.

I also wonder what implications this has for the VS BoA issued credit cards? I noted my statements for the last few months have broken out the 1x earning as standard earnings and the .5x earning as "bonus or promotional" earnings. That makes me suspect 1.5x earnings which is has been the standard earn rate on the US VS black card may be going away at somepoint.

Jimgotkp

I wonder what this will do to redemptions on partner airlines...

36902BRF

While it addresses only one specific airline from the FAQ:

19. I often travel with Delta. What do these changes mean for me?
We haven’t made any changes to the earning and spending rates you will get when you fly with Delta.

However, I have seen a quote from one of their PR folks stating that they are planning further "enhancements" in 2017 so who knows.....

Silver Fox

That's ugly for Las Vegas in UC now, 135,000 miles "standard". But a lot to digest as someone said.

stuart_f

I've found the one genuine improvement in the whole announcement!

Edit: With a little more thought it's clear they have restructured into a revenue based scheme even though it still tries to hide this by talking about rewards based on miles flown.

The tier point changes mean very little. They have multiplied by 25 to get bigger numbers (perhaps because BA tier points are bigger numbers?). The actual effect is pretty minimal, Gold is still the only status worth anything. Silver remains meaningless, Reds will no longer even be issued a card.

Limiting household accounts to Gold card holders seems to be a mad idea. If you have the IT to support it, why not offer this as a feature to everyone? I imagine lots of Red members visit the Mouse once a year in Economy with a family. They might be tempted to remain loyal to Virgin year after year if they could build up their miles to a point where they eventually get to fly one of them to Orlando for free. By refusing to allow them to pool miles I doubt any of them will ever earn enough so they might as well shop around for the best deal and Virgin might find them heading off to Thompson or Norwegian instead.

Miles plus money (3,000 miles for £18 off) now puts a hard floor on the value of a point. It's a fairly low floor though, 0.6p per mile.

Redemption rates in PE and Y have gone down across the board. Good news if you are sat on a stack of miles and aren't dead set on redeeming in UC. UC has gone up in almost all cases but not by very much. I suppose it could have been worse.

Earning rates (for flying) have taken a nose dive for all but the most expensive flexible classes. The sweet spot looks to be S fares in PE if you can find one at a reasonable price.

Earning via Tesco looks set to remain, I assume that's what the vague reference to, "if you have opted in to automatically convert points from a partner programme into Flying Club, this will continue as normal" is about.

It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, the co-branded credit cards will offer in the way of a new sign-up bonus and earning rates when this change comes in.

More thought required to understand upgrades and whether they are worth it. Perhaps I'll wait for Rob to crunch the numbers for us when he's back off holiday.

craigthemif

Yeah, it's January... I saw the November date and started freaking out between figuring out how to burn my VS miles, writing it up for my blog and posting here, and actually reading about the changes.

As mentioned, Upper Class awards is going to be rough. Y and PE not so much. But they already ran those award sales a couple of times a year...

Hong Kong actually goes down a smidge at off-peak for Upper Class. The only flight (ex-HKG) where you can avoid the surcharges...

36902BRF

It also looks like you can change the date of reservations made pre-deval and keep the devaluation pricing per the faq though you will need to pay the change fee. Given that I'll likely make a reservation in late 2017 with the hopes of moving it to 2018 (all my travel for 2017 is pretty much planned out and reserved at this point). Now I just need to figure out what I want to do in 2018....

backdoc

How the ..... are we supposed to plan our renewal for Gold now?

stuart_f

It's disappointing that there was no mention of a certain guaranteed number of reward seats and no hint of a 2-4-1 voucher. Two features of BA that I would love to see Virgin copy.

stuart_f

I'm not sure why planing to regain Gold is any more difficult that it was before.



He's a comparison table showing the old tier points, the same old tier points multiplied by 25 so that they use the same units as the new system and, finally, the new tier points.

There are some winners (J, C, D) and especially (I) and some losers (K, H) and (Y,B,R,L,U,M). (V,E,Q,X,N,O) are the biggest losers by being cut in half but then again, half of not a lot is still not a lot.

The old Silver level was 15 points and is now 400. A slight rise (it should translate to 375 but 400 is a nice round number) since nothing earns only 15 tier points under the new system it shouldn't actually matter much.

The old Gold level was 40 points and is now 1000. No change.

Planning should be pretty straightforward.