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These are unprecedented times, and many airlines aren’t going to survive. With cash being refunded to customers faster than it is being collected from new bookings, we will soon see which airlines don’t have enough cash on hand to survive.

With that in mind, I write about the new promotion being launched by Virgin Atlantic. For every Virgin Atlantic flight booked between now and 30 April, 2020, members can earn 2,500 bonus miles per sector. The bonus will apply for flights flown before 31 March, 2021.

In the simplest terms, if you book a return ticket with Virgin Atlantic in any cabin, you will earn 5,000 bonus miles when the flights credit to your Flying Club account.

Flights must be both operated by Virgin Atlantic and marketed by Virgin Atlantic (flight number starts with VS) to be applicable for the bonus miles. Codeshare flights are excluded from this offer. 

Virgin Holidays Offer

Flying Club is also offering 100 bonus Tier Points to the lead named passenger on any Flight + Hotel or Virgin Holidays package booked before 30 April, 2020.

Interestingly, these 100 bonus Tier Points will be credited to your account by 31 May, 2020, irrespective of when travel is due to take place.

Before you go ahead and book several trips to earn elite status for the entire family… named passengers other than the lead passenger are not entitled to earn bonus tier points. In addition, if Tier Points have been awarded to the lead passenger and the booking is subsequently cancelled, the TPs will be removed.

As a reminder, Flying Club members require:

• 400 Tier Points within the last 12 months – now possibly 18 – to reach Silver status
• 1,000 Tier Points within the last 12 months – now possibly 18 – to reach Gold status

The Bottom Line

You can find details of these promotions by clicking here.

Virgin Atlantic will be desperate to shore up its cash flow by receiving cash today for flights tomorrow… I hesitate to say that 5,000 miles is worth £50 or so, because the airline might not survive long enough for you to spend those miles. The UK government may have larger concerns than saving a non-essential airline. And it’s hard to imagine Delta, Air France, etc. coming to the rescue when they themselves will be battling to survive…

But if you feel comfortable enough to book future flights on Virgin Atlantic, make sure to use a real credit card that comes with Section 75 protection. In these crazy times, I wouldn’t even want to rely on the “similar to Section 75” protections offered by many fintech companies, who could easily see their private equity finance dry up…