Virgin Atlantic Dramatically Reduces Cost of Transferring Points

It’s never fun when an airline charges you to transfer or pool your points (we’re looking at you, Delta), since it eats into the value of each point you’ve earned.

Virgin Atlantic has long been one of those airlines, which has meant that anyone who wanted to transfer points to someone else would have had to pay ridiculous amounts of money to make it happen. Fortunately, however, Virgin Atlantic has chosen to drop the rate to a single flat fee on all point transfers.

Let’s take a look at the details.

Transferring Virgin Points to Other Members

In the past, it would have cost you roughly $10 per 1,000 points you wanted to transfer (plus an administration fee). This is a huge departure from the new flat fee of just $15 it’ll cost you to transfer points.

This represents a huge savings and actually makes it affordable to pool your points with someone else. Note that there is no maximum amount of points you can transfer each year, though if you’re attempting to transfer more than 2 million points at once you’ll need to call the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club support team to do so at 1-(800)-862-8621.

To transfer your points you’ll want to do the following:

• Log into your Virgin Atlantic Flying Club account
• Select My Account
• Scroll down to the section called Buy, gift, or transfer Virgin Points
• Select Transfer Virgin Points

Earning and Redeeming Virgin Points

Virgin points are incredibly easy to earn thanks to the program’s partnerships with multiple flexible point currencies including Bilt Rewards, Capital One Miles, American Express Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou Rewards, and Chase Ultimate Rewards, all of which transfer at a 1:1 ratio. You can also transfer Marriott Bonvoy points at a 3:1 ratio with a 5,000-mile bonus for every 60,000 points you transfer.

In addition to being easy to earn, Virgin Points are also extremely valuable thanks to the generous redemptions the program offers with partner airlines. For example, you can fly ANA’s coveted The Room business class from Japan to the West Coast for just 45,000 points one-way. That’s a steal for a product that normally sells for upwards of $5,000.

Final Thoughts

This is great news for anyone wanting to pool points with another person for redemptions with Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. In many cases, it’s simpler to share points between an airline (or hotel) than to try and do so using your flexible point currencies. And now that Virgin has reduced the cost to share your points with others, it’s become a much more accessible solution for combining balances.