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Buying Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles doesn’t often make sense, especially since you can accumulate them rather easily through promotions from Tesco Clubcard, etc.

Until 31 October, 2017, you will receive a 30% bonus from Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles when buying or gifting miles, or taking advantage of Miles Booster.

Buying miles is not usually good value, even with a 30% bonus. Miles normally cost 1.5p each (plus a £15 service charge), so even with this bonus that will only reduce to around 1.17p each if you buy the maximum 100,000 (+30,000 bonus) each member can buy during a calendar year. I would only buy miles if there was a specific, good-value redemption you wanted – and you were a few thousand miles short. Earlier this year I wrote a post trying to justify a valuation of 1p for a Virgin mile, and barely managed to do so…

Miles Booster is more interesting though. Miles Booster allows you to effectively buy miles for 1p a mile, but the amount you can buy is based on the actual number of miles flown on a Virgin Atlantic flight. (there are a few examples on the Miles Booster website – you can buy up to double the base miles flown) So, a 30% bonus would bring your net cost down to the 0.77p per mile range. This is potentially worth considering if you are a Virgin Atlantic regular.

An interesting element to Miles Booster is that you can choose to take advantage of it on any Virgin Atlantic flight you’ve taken within the last 6 months. So, if you built up a decent balance of Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles from a recent flight, and want to top up for an award redemption, you can use this Miles Booster promotion to cost-effectively get there. You can also purchase Miles Booster for any future flights you already have booked; you will receive the 30% bonus even if your flight takes place after October.

If you want to remind yourself of the best use of Virgin Atlantic miles, you should read this post.