How I Saved Hundreds by Booking a LATAM Flight With Virgin’s Loyalty Program

My ability to plan my travels in advance has changed since I recently became a full-time nomad. Now, I have to plan where I will sleep every night for the foreseeable future and book the flights to get there.

I know this is a very nice problem to have, but the constant researching and booking have become so time-consuming that it’s getting hard to plan more than a month ahead.

A recent example of this is when I was booking a flight from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo 9 days before the day I needed to fly. When I checked 2 days earlier, the price for the flight was less than $100, and I figured it could wait a bit longer. I couldn’t believe it when I finally went to book and saw that this 40-minute flight had soared to over $300!

At that point, I started looking into whether I could use points to save a chunk of cash — and I did so successfully.

The Hack: Booking My LATAM Flight With Virgin Points

In my experience, flexibility has always been key to getting the best mileage redemptions. Unfortunately for this trip, the dates and airports of choice were set in stone. I had to be in São Paulo on February 26 for work, and I had plans in Rio through the 25th, so shifting around my dates wasn’t an option.

São Paulo and Rio have large international airports outside the city: Guarulhos (GRU) in São Paulo and Galeão (GIG) in Rio, which are the usual arrival points for nonstop flights from the U.S.

However, each city also has smaller domestic airports within its limits that are much cheaper and faster to get to and from. For that reason, I was only considering flights between the smaller airports: Santos Dumont (SDU) in Rio de Janeiro and Congonhas (CGH) in São Paulo.

I didn’t have enough LATAM miles to redeem them with the airline itself, but then I remembered that, as of last summer, you can redeem Virgin Points for LATAM flights.

I logged in to my account, and with some luck, I found a redemption available on the date I needed for just 7,500 Virgin Points and $7.70 in taxes and fees!

Even though there are dozens of daily LATAM flights between Rio and São Paulo, the only departure time available for redemption was 6:40 a.m. As someone who needs at least 8 hours of sleep to function properly, I hesitated about setting a 3:30 a.m. alarm.

Ultimately, the idea of saving almost $300 on a flight won me over, and I confirmed the booking easily with a few clicks on Virgin Atlantic Flying Club’s website.

I paid for the taxes with my U.K. version of the Platinum Card^® from American Express. The U.S. version of this card earns 5 points per $1 spent on flights booked directly with the airline or through AmexTravel.com (up to a maximum of $500,000 in a calendar year, then 1x).

Applying LATAM Elite Benefits to a Partner Booking

My LATAM flight appeared instantly in the booking section of my Virgin Atlantic Flying Club account. As this was a partner airline redemption, the information about my ticket was very limited, and there was no option to make changes such as seat selection.

I was also unable to manually add my LATAM Pass number to the booking through Virgin Flying Club. Since my LATAM Pass Black elite status includes free seat selection and other valuable perks, I was hoping to find a way to apply it to this reservation.

I quickly called LATAM Airlines, and the agent was more than happy to add my LATAM Pass number to the booking. I was then able to make changes to my flight, such as choosing a seat, via the LATAM app (iOS, Android).

Saving almost $300 on this flight between São Paulo and Rio is a testament to the value of Virgin’s loyalty program, and it’s easier than ever to earn these points for travel. As I plan on traveling around South America for another few months, I’m looking forward to seeing how much more money I might save on flights through this strategic method.