What is Virgin Atlantic?
Virgin Atlantic is a British Airline, similar to British Airways. It was created in June 1984 by Virgin Group owner Richard Branson. Virgin Atlantic officially joined Skyteam in March of 2023, an airline alliance started by Delta Airlines.
Virgin Atlantic, like the rest of their Virgin Group cohorts are known for being an upmarket, fun brand that targets Adults. For the purpose of this article we will be talking about their award miles currency called Virgin Miles, or Virgin Red Points depending on how you earn the currency.
How do I get Virgin Miles?
Virgin Miles or Red Points can be obtained through all the major credit card issuers including American Express, Chase, Citi, and Capital One. You can of course obtain points for flying Virgin Atlantic or any of the Skyteam alliance airlines as well.
| Chase | Amex | Citi | Capital One |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1:1 | 1:1 | 1:1 | 1:1 |
| instantly | instantly | instantly | instantly |
Asia
ANA to Tokyo
Everyone always brings up flying to Tokyo using Virgin Atlantic Miles. Even with the recent price increase you can still fly to Japan from the western part of the United States for 90K miles round trip in Business class. If you want to fly in First that will by 145K miles, this is on a partner named ANA. All Nippon Airlines is a top 3 airline according to Skytrax. The cool thing about booking ANA via Virgin instead of directly, I’d that you don’t have to book your award round trip like you do on their own metal. You can book one way awards at half the cost of the round trip miles 45k miles and 72.5K miles respectively.
Delta to Incheon
Another good option would be Flying Delta from Seattle or Atlanta to Incheon, South Korea. This will set you back 60K Points each way, but you will get Delta One Suites for a nice 10-12 hours.
Virgin to Telaviv
One no one I ever see bring up is all of the locations you can fly directly on Virgin Atlantic. You can fly from North America to London Heathrow (LHR) and from there there are plenty of locations you can hit for very little miles.
A place I have had by eyes on is Tel Aviv , Israel. Maybe I’ll go one day when it is a little safer..
Europe
Being based in England, of course you can fly to the UK for a good price for miles. But due to the taxes and fees associated with entering England and stopping in LHR it can be very expensive moneywise to stop here. If you are willing to look past that though, 47K miles each way on Virgin’s own business class is great!
AirFrance & KLM
You also have access to AirFrance and KLM Dutch airlines due to Virgin being in the Skyteam alliance. You can book a one way flight in business from the US to France on AirFrance for 30K Miles each way.
Of course you can fly through LHR and transfer from there using Virgin as mentioned before:
In Conclusion
If you want an easy to use flying currency with portals easy to Asia and Europe with lots of award availability. You won’t regret fly with Virgin Atlantic. They are my first choice when ever I want to fly in the US domestically via Delta, and Internationally to Europe, or to Asia
