20% bonus on Tesco Clubcard conversions to Virgin Flying Club – worth it?

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Virgin Atlantic has launched a 20% bonus on transfers of Tesco Clubcard points to Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club. This means that you will receive 300 miles per £1 of Clubcard vouchers you convert, rather than the standard 250.

At the time of writing the deal has not made it onto the Tesco website. It is explained here on the Virgin Flying Club site.

The deals runs to June 19th and the miles generally appear 1-2 days after initiating the transfer.

Virgin is also repeating its offer of 1,000 bonus Virgin miles for opting-in for auto-conversion of your Clubcard points each quarter to Virgin.

Nothing stops you agreeing to this and then cancelling after one quarter. If you have a dormant Clubcard account, you should set that up to auto-convert to Virgin Flying Club – based on last year, you will still receive the bonus miles even though nothing is being sent over. You cannot earn this bonus if you have previously had an auto-convert bonus.

You may remember that, between January and March, Virgin was running a very generous 30% conversion bonus. This offer is clearly worse than that one, although 20% is ‘the norm’ with Flying Club. In any event, you can’t turn back the clock.

We don’t know yet if British Airways will be offering any sort of Tesco conversion promotion this quarter. They haven’t done one for a couple of years now although the Avios devaluation may have changed their thinking.

Should you jump to Virgin Flying Club now BA has devalued Avios?

Perhaps. But DO NOT do it just because of the devaluation.

Virgin generally copies everything that British Airways does. It is not a coincidence that their premium credit card offers 18,500 miles as a bonus when the British Airways Premium Plus usually offers 18,000. The two tend to move in step.

It would make commercial logic for Virgin to do a similar devaluation over the next few months. As long as it isn’t as bad as the BA devaluation, they will still come out smelling of roses. If you don’t have an immediate plan to redeem your Virgin miles, you might want to hold back just in case.

Here is a reminder of some of the key features of Virgin Flying Club if you were considering doing a transfer:

1. Diversification

British Airways can fly you to pretty much anywhere that Virgin Atlantic can. However, that doesn’t mean they can get you Avios seats when you want them. Having a balance in another programme gives you more chance of getting seats on the dates you want them.

Both BA and Virgin allow one-way redemptions, so with a Virgin balance you could mix and match a trip as availability allows. Virgin also partners with Delta in the US and a number of other airlines.

However, Virgin and BA are both UK-focussed airlines, so you are likely to face an identical squeeze around UK school holidays. You may want to expand into Star Alliance and redeem on, say, Lufthansa if you want a better chance of seats at UK half-term.

It is also worth noting that Virgin has been cutting its route network. Any route which does not fly to North America or the Caribbean should be seen as under threat. If they can pull Tokyo, Mumbai and Cape Town – which they did recently – then nothing is safe. Given the painful overnight flight time from the UK, I would be worried about the Dubai service for example.

2. Cheaper taxes in Economy – but no longer fewer miles

Virgin Atlantic has lower taxes than BA on Economy redemptions. These are quite aggressive – New York is £95 cheaper than BA.

Virgin also runs occasional but fairly regular redemption sales with big discounts on the miles needed for economy class redemptions.

Here is a sample of charges compared to BA:

New York, economy: Virgin £248 & 35,000 (British Airways off-peak: £338 & 26,000)

New York, business: Virgin £488 & 80,000 (British Airways off-peak: £515 & 100,000)

Las Vegas economy: Virgin £218 & 42,500 (British Airways off-peak: £364 & 32,500)

Las Vegas, business: Virgin £499 & 100,000 (British Airways off-peak: £560 & 125,000)

A key point to note here is that – at off-peak times – the new British Airways economy rates are very aggressive. 26,000 Avios for a return flight to New York is very good. If fuel surcharges come down then these will look very attractive, although at the moment you may prefer to use more Virgin miles and pay the lower surcharges.

3. Availability

I do not redeem on Virgin, so cannot comment on how easy or hard it is to get availability. In general, Upper Class cabins have fewer seats than BA Club World cabins with subsequent squeezes on availability. Is it easy to get 4 Upper Class seats on Virgin for a family? I don’t know. We also don’t know enough about the new British Airways availability patterns to make a fair comparison.

You can check availability on the Virgin website without having enough miles in your account to do the redemption. You should spend some time researching your favourite routes before deciding whether to commit miles to Flying Club.

4. No 2-4-1 Amex voucher, but an upgrade voucher

There is no equivalent of the BA Amex 2-4-1 voucher. The Virgin credit card does give a 2-4-1 voucher but ONLY ON FLEXIBLE CASH TICKETS. You can, however, get a voucher with the Virgin credit card to upgrade Economy redemptions to Premium Economy for no extra miles. The two Virgin credit cards are reviewed here and here. Their home page is here.

5. Fallback option of transferring to Hilton HHonors or IHG Rewards Club

Rare among airline schemes, Virgin lets you transfer miles out into Hilton HHonors (2:3) or IHG Rewards Club (the Holiday Inn etc scheme) at 1:1. There is a minimum transfer of 10,000 Virgin miles. If you found yourself struggling to use your Virgin miles, you could also move them across.

A 20% transfer bonus does NOT make such transfers a great deal, however.

I value Hilton HHonors points at 0.3p. A £1 Tesco voucher gets you 300 Virgin miles which is 450 Hilton points. At 0.3p, they are worth £1.35. Terrible, less than 1.5x the face value of your Clubcard points.

Similarly, I value IHG Rewards Club points at 0.5p. A £1 Tesco voucher gets you 300 Virgin miles which is 300 IHG Rewards Club points. At 0.5p that, that is just £1.50 of value. Avoid, unless you are just topping up your account.

6. The Heathrow Clubhouse

The Virgin lounge at Heathrow, for Upper Class passengers, is widely regarded as one of the best airport lounges in the world. Get a haircut, have a massage, eat a proper meal, chill out in the audio or TV rooms or do one of many other (admittedly ‘boys toys’ type) activities. Well worth trying once in your life.

Note that, whilst full fare cash tickets in Upper Class also get a free chauffeur to and from the airport, reward tickets do NOT get this.

7. Easy to collect additional miles

It is as easy to collect Flying Club miles as it is Avios. You can transfer from Tesco, Amex Membership Rewards and Heathrow Rewards, as well as all the major hotel schemes. As I wrote here, some major hotel chains do not give Avios but do offer Flying Club miles.

There is a shopping portal similar to the Avios estore. There are also decent promotions, eg 6,000 miles for opening an ISA and 3,000 miles for your first case of wine.

Conclusion

Flying Club has something to offer the person who redeems in Economy – lower taxes and the ability to upgrade to Premium Economy for free via the credit card voucher.

You even get the option of selected long haul departures from Manchester, which BA abandoned long ago. There will even be a handful of flights from Glasgow and Belfast this Summer.

At peak BA dates, you will also require fewer miles to fly Virgin in economy. On off-peak BA dates it is not so clear cut.

For business class redemptions, it is also less clear cut. Smaller cabins, a smaller route network and fewer daily flights may make it trickier to find seats. Post April 28th, Virgin Upper Class redemptions look great value compared to BA but how long will that last?

There is no British Airways American Express 241 voucher, which for a couple effectively makes a ‘once a year’ redeemer require twice the miles. (It has a proportionately lower impact on a family of 4 taking multiple long-haul flights each year.)

Virgin also has ‘route risk’ now. Non-North America routes are being cut aggressively. If you are planning to fly east rather than west, be aware that your route may not exist in a year.

You have until June 19th to decide whether to convert or not.

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: