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You may remember my excitement when Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) added Virgin America’s ‘Elevate‘ loyalty programme as a transfer partner.

I’m fortunate to have plenty of SPG Starpoints that I can transfer over, but completely understand that even many of the most avid Points and Miles enthusiasts in the UK do not, and that collecting Starpoints (or Elevate Miles directly) in the UK can be tough.

That’s why I was so pleased to share yesterday how everyone can currently buy Virgin America Elevate Miles (or indeed pretty much any other type of frequent flyer Miles!) for ~ 1.25 pence each, via the SPG Starpoints sale.

That 1.25p figure does assume you transfer from Starwood in blocks of 20,000, otherwise it would work out at 1.56 pence per Mile (because you don’t get 5,000 bonus Miles), but I would always recommend doing so – therefore as a rule of thumb I’ll stick with 1.25p per Elevate Mile, or £12.50 per 1000 Elevate Miles.

Being able to buy Elevate Miles at that sort of price opens up some incredible deals, and this is the first I wanted to share!

2,750 Free Miles

Before going any further, it’s worth mentioning again that 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.

It only takes a few minutes, so I’m going to assume everyone starts with a balance of 2,750 Elevate Miles. It can take a while for them to get added to your account though, so just add £34.38 (1.25p x 2,750) to my figures below, if you haven’t got yours yet and need to buy the extra Miles.

The Deal

I wrote a post a while ago explaining how you can fly between Manchester and Munich on a long-haul configured Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300ER (the flight carries on to Singapore, but picks up/drops off passengers in Munich) for very few Virgin America Miles and minimal taxes.

Regardless of which Class of travel you book, from Manchester, the taxes are £26.00 ($38.00) One-way or ~ £50.00 ($73.00) Return. Taxes are a bit less if you are starting in Munich.

The number of Miles required are:

• Economy: 3,600 One-Way, 6,000 Return
• Business: 7,800 One-way, 13,000 Return
• First: 10,200 One Way, 17,000 Return

Assuming you’ve picked up the 2,750 free Elevate Miles, and buy the rest required as explained in this post for 1.25p each, the total cost works out as follows:

One-way

• Economy: £10.63 + £26.00 tax = £36.63
• Business: £63.13 + £26.00 tax = £89.13
• First: £93.13 + £26.00 tax = £119.13

Return

• Economy: £40.63 + £50.00 tax = £90.63
• Business: £102.50 + £50.00 tax = £152.50
• First: £178.13 + £50.00 tax = £228.13

For comparison, One-way cash fares are about:

• £85.00 in Economy
• £295.00 in Business
• £590.00 in First

and Return fares are roughly:

• £157.00 in Economy
• £499.00 in Business
• £996.00 in First Class

First Class award availability seems to be extremely scarce (and possibly non-existent at the moment), but Singapore Airlines Business Class is amazing too!

Pretty good for £90.00 anyway!

PS. If you want even more Starpoints/Miles remember that Amex issue a UK credit card with a 10,000 Starpoint sign-up bonus. You can email me at [email protected] if you would like a referral that will get you a bonus 1,000 Starpoints.