Virgin Flying Club improves ‘Miles Booster’ – apologies for being hard on it yesterday!

I ran a long piece yesterday dissecting the recently announced changes to Virgin’s Flying Club.  On the whole, I thought they represented a genuine improvement, mainly to those who fly and / or redeem in Economy.

I mentioned ‘Miles Booster‘ in my piece, and specifically I said:

Miles Booster is just weird … I don’t see the point of it

When Miles Booster was launched in November 2012, I wrote about it here.

Basically, when you booked a Virgin Atlantic flight for cash, Virgin allowed you to buy additional Flying Club miles up to the 200% of the base miles that you would earn from the flight itself.  If you took a flight to New York, return, you would earn 6,916 base miles in Flying Club, before any status or cabin bonus.  Miles Booster allows you to buy 13,832 miles on top.

Good idea in theory.  Bad idea in practice, because Virgin was charging the same price as the standard ‘buy miles’ price!  As long as you hadn’t reach your annual cap on buying miles, ‘Miles Booster’ was therefore pointless.  It was also expensive, at 1.5p per mile plus a transaction fee.

What I hadn’t noticed is that, at some point this year, Virgin cut the price of ‘Miles Booster’ miles sharply.

If you look at the official Miles Booster page you will see that Flying Club is now charging just 1p per mile you buy.  They have also, in the new round of programme improvements, removed the £15 transaction fee.

This is now a genuinely good deal compared to buying miles via the normal channel.  The standard ‘buy miles’ price for Flying Club is 1.5p each plus a £15 fee.  ‘Miles Booster’ lets you buy them for 1p each with no fee.

Now, buying Flying Club miles for 1p each is still not a huge bargain.  However, if you need to top off your account to reach a certain redemption level, then it is a pretty good deal.

More interestingly – assuming that the offer outlined on the official Miles Booster page is still running – they are offering 1,000 bonus miles for every transaction.  

This is a great bargain for Little Red customers!  Last month, I booked a one-way from Manchester to London on Little Red.  Assuming that Miles Booster applies to one-way flights, I could (in theory) buy 1,750 Flying Club miles for just £7.50.  That is a steal however you look at it.

How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, one has a bonus of 15,000 points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

The UK’s most generous free Visa or Mastercard at 0.75 points / £1 Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 points bonus and the most generous non-Amex for day to day spending Read our full review

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 30,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 30,000 Virgin Points:

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Points. 

(Want to earn more Virgin Points?  Click here to see our recent articles on Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club and click here for our home page with the latest news on earning and spending other airline and hotel points.)