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I have already written quite a bit about some of the great deals to be found on the Virgin America (VA) ‘Elevate’ award chart, but have now discovered something absolutely astonishing when using Elevate Miles to fly on on VA’s partner Singapore Airlines!

The process for getting hold of Virgin America Elevate Miles is relatively complex – so you might want to read the following posts before continuing:

SPG’s Fantastic New Transfer Partner – Virgin America

Business Class to Hong Kong for 30,000 Points

Business Class to India for 20,000 Points

The upshot is that you can now transfer SPG Starpoints to Virgin America’s Elevate loyalty programme at a 1:1 rate. You also receive 5,000 bonus Miles when transferring in blocks of 20,000 Starpoints – so 20,000 Starpoints gets you 25,000 Elevate Miles, 40,000 gets you 50,000 etc.

 

The Deal

Singapore Airlines (SIA) is one of the very best airlines in the world, and their Airbus A380s are the pride of the fleet, featuring the iconic ‘Suites’ in their First Class cabins. SIA happens to fly one of their A380s on a slightly surprising route between Frankfurt and New York.

Singapore Airlines is a partner of Virgin America, which means that you can redeem Elevate Miles for SIA flights.

The Elevate award chart for redeeming on SIA is generally excellent (they don’t actually have an award chart as such, you need to play around on the website looking up each route individually) and I’ll cover some of the other deals at a later date, but the Frankfurt-New York deal is extraordinary and deserves its own post.

The Elevate programme is a bit unusual in that it allows one-ways but, for such flights, charges more than 50% of the Miles required for a Return.

Frankfurt-New York (JFK) One-Way

• Economy: 12,000 Miles
• Business Class: 35,400 Miles
• First Class: 54,000 Miles

Frankfurt-New York (JFK) Return

• Economy: 20,000 Miles (equivalent to 10,000 each way)
• Business Class: 59,000 Miles (equivalent to 29,500 each way)
• First Class: 90,000 Miles (equivalent to 45,000 each way)

Every single one of these prices is world-beating (even the more expensive one-way awards are, let alone the crazy Return prices!).

For crossing the Atlantic, most frequent flyer programmes require 20,000+ Miles/Avios in Economy, 50,000+  in Business and 80,000+ in First Class ONE-WAY. 

In other words, these awards are literally half the price of other frequent flyer programmes.

The best bit though is that there aren’t any expensive ‘surcharges’ either!

All classes of travel attract taxes of just ~ £52.00 ($75.00) one-way or ~£102.00 ($147.00) Return.

To provide a bit context, for a Return from London to New York, British Airways charges:

• Economy: 26,000-40,000 Avios + £300.55
• Business: 100,000-120,000 Avios + £479.55
• First Class: 136,000-160,000  Avios + £479.55

So, using Elevate Miles on SIA doesn’t just save you huge amounts of Miles/Avios, but £100.00s as well. You can easily get a budget airline flight to Frankfurt from most parts of the UK for ~ £20.00 most of the time.

It’s also fair to say that even the most patriotic of Brits would have to admit that Singapore Airlines is in a different league to BA (or indeed any of the other airlines that fly between Europe and the USA!).

The best price in Miles (by far), with no surcharges, for the best airline flying the route – that’s what I call a great deal!

Bonus:

You can get 2,500 free Virgin America Elevate Miles simply by signing up here and referring 4 friends/family members (500 for signing up, and 500 for each referral).

AND another 250 free Elevate Miles just for entering this Virgin America competition.