new to this
 

ok, so having flown with Thomas cook for the past 2 holidays, I ended up taking a couple of internal flights and getting the train and have ended up with a virgin flying club account. my plan is to try and get enough to use for a holiday next year (well the flight parts). aswell as having a clubcard that already has some points on it, I have got the missis a clubcard bank account so we get extras for the housekeeping type shopping. I have also signed up for a stocks and shares ISA. I already have a virgin credit card , so cannot apply for another one and it seems mine does not give me miles. I have to things, one , I am unsure if I should be doing anything else to try and maximise miles ( somebody told me I should keep saving clubcard points until there is an extra percentage conversion offer is this correct?) and secondly there will be 2 of us flying hopefully Manchester to las vegas in either may /june or September next year. I would like to fly minimum of preium economy and was trying to work out how many points I needed to collect and got confused.
thanks for reading the massive amounts of waffle#

As you say you don't get any miles is looks as though you have a Virgin MONEY card.

To earn miles you need either the white or black Virgin Atlantic MBNA Amex cards. This isn;t the same as the Virgin Money card and is offered by a different company. But there is an annual fee for the black one. But there are some sign up bonuses of you spend £X in Ymonths. However nice the bonus miles are you need to check to see if the cards are right for you and there are changes ahead with AMEX ceasing to allow 3rd party providers from offering AMEX cards.


Other ways to earn miles is to sign up to answer e-rewards surveys. Ther are also other VS partners listed on the VS website.

As to how many miles you need - just do a dummy booking on the VS site (selecting 'use miles') and it will tell you. Though remember availabilty is always limited.

Yes, that seems the right card. Will look at a dummy booking, thank you. The esurvey, it said I needed to be invited,so will have to look into that one.

It's worth noting that you might end up shocked at the amount of taxes and surcharges you will pay on your supposed "award" flight. And that it can be close to impossible to find award seats on popular routes.

So, whilst it's great to have a goal when starting out in this hobby, you also need to recognise that you need to be quite flexible. So miles might not work for this particular trip, but hopefully they will for the next one to a VS destination...

that is true, but I have the advantage of being pretty flexible on dates, so am hoping that will help.

also my thinking was if I am going to be doing this shopping / traveling anyway, then sticking with one group / collection isn't a great hardship, so anything off is a bonus :-)
also I've spotted that the theme seems to be that while u may ot get the cheapest options for free, there is the possibility of paying what you were going to pay, and getting a much nicer experience for it.

Hi, yes due to the surcharges only UC makes sense to me. When booking early enough I had no problems finding 3 UC NYC - London tickets (could even choose the day/flight that worked best for me). And if not flying Virgin Atlantic metal the value can be extraordinary. Got 2 F seats on ANA NYC-Tokyo for 120k each and around $170 pP. United/ANA/.... would want a lot more points/miles for this journey.

So plan find your sweet spot and jump on it when it is available

have looked into it and cancelled my virgin card and gone for the virgin atlantic white one.
not used it for huge amounts, but just found things like the shops away or whatever its called has blackcircles on its, which is where I get my tyres anyway.

To maximise your miles income you need to put all spending on your White Amex, if you spend £10k in a year (amex spend only) you will get 1 upgrade voucher so you pay for economy miles but get PE seats, this can be split into singles and used one way for both of you.

The gold Amex is worth signing up for it does have a £140 fee in the 2nd year, but sign up is worth 22k miles if you get someone to refer you. Once you have met the sign up requirements refer your partner, wait for the referral miles, transfer your miles out to Flying club and close it down, wait 6 months and repeat.