(For whatever reason, I spend a lot of time combining the Virgin award charts. I think I might be the equivalent of a travel-hacking hipster, playing with programs and credit cards because they’re explicitly not in vogue).

The Credit Card

No blog post would be complete without a credit card pitch, but given that we don’t do credit card affiliate links, some math an explanation will have to suffice.

The current public sign-up bonus is a tiered bonus, as follows:

• 20,000 points after first purchase
• 50,000 points for spending $12,000 in 6 months
• Another 7,500 points for spending $15,000 in the first year
• Another 7,500 points for spending $25,000 in the first year
• 5,000 points for adding an authorized user

Here’s a direct application link (seriously, I just copy-pasted from the email they sent me advertising it).

Let’s say you go for the $15,000 tier (probably the sweet spot, given you’re already going to spend $12,000). You’d wind up with 105,000 points (bonuses plus 1.5 points per dollar spent) for $300 in opportunity cost over putting that spending on a 2% cash back card.

The reason I bother mentioning it is that it offers a pretty good return on everyday spending, and since premium cabin redemptions on partners are consistently less than twice the miles price of economy across all partners, it can put them well within reach of most people.

Virgin Atlantic Awards and Terms

Just don’t do them. The fees are absurd. That said, if you do a one-way award ex-Hong Kong the fuel surcharges should be capped. (Note: I’m being dramatic; see the comments for a bit of discussion).

Here’s a link to their chart.

That said, their mileage terms are useful to read, since they make it **really, really** hard to get a complete picture of what’s going on otherwise. Specifically, they mention the following:

• Date changes are allowed for a 30 GBP fee, which is actually quite nice. Bookings are cancellable for a full refund up to 24 hours of departure for the same cancellation fee.
• Open jaws are allowed on VS metal, which is basically a given since they allow one-way awards anyway.

One interesting bit about partner redemptions is that it may take VS up to 48 hours to book the award with the partner, which means precious availability might be taken out from under your feet in the mean time. Because of this, you can’t make a booking within 72 hours of departure.

Unfortunately, one-ways are not allowed in general. Or rather, they are, but you still have to pay the round-trip price.

4.6.2 Partner Rewards flights, except for Virgin Australia, are only valid for round trip travel between the destinations specified by the Reward provider using the routes stipulated by the relevant Reward provider. Members can redeem one-way Reward flights with partner airlines, however the full redemption levels as listed on our website will apply, unless specified on the Participating Company page.

The two exceptions are ANA and Jet Airways, for reasons that will become clear below.

Update: Looks like all the Virgin group partners (VS, VA, VX) allow one ways. Thanks to Raj for the info in the comments!

Unfortunately, no partner is excepted from the “stipulated routes” provision, which basically means that in order to travel between two regions/cities via the airline’s home country, you need to book two separate awards (except in the very rare case when the connecting route is stipulated).

A Big Caveat

No joke, they took down a bunch of the partner charts between yesterday and today. Even archive.org comes up blank. So I’m doing this all from memory plus a very old post from Million Mile Secrets (some of the charts on there are out-of-date, and some of the listed airlines are no longer partners). So bookmark this for posterity, folks 😉

Air China

They only offer awards between Beijing and London, so this probably isn’t useful for most people. Here’s the “chart”:

• 56,000/63,000/75,000 for Economy/Business/First, plus taxes, which are going to be pesky because flying out of London is expensive.

Air New Zealand

This is a fun one. First, here’s the chart, which is up-to-date, as far as I remember from what I saw yesterday:

The first (and important) note is that Air New Zealand’s chart is one of the few that includes routes where the airline’s home country is not an endpoint, so for those who live on the west coast of the U.S., you can get to the South Pacific for a mere 60,000/80,000, and if you live in Europe, you can fly the long way from London via LA for 110,000/170,000.

It also includes two fifth-freedom routes: LAX-LHR and HKG-LHR, which is super unusual (but awesome!).

As will be a theme for most of the good partner charts, Business Class awards on Air New Zealand offer great value, even more so if you believe my one friend who will go on record saying that Air New Zealand’s Business Class is the best in the world. Award availability on the AKL-LAX and LAX-LHR legs has been pretty reliable lately, with two seats open many days, so this is a good one to keep in mind. That said, you’ll almost certainly be stuck with some hefty fuel surcharges, so it’s better to look at the award tickets as a discount for paying some portion with miles rather than a free flight.

Update: I gave Virgin Atlantic a call to try to price these flights, and they seem to have trouble seeing NZ award availability. I’m not sure if they have a separate agreement with NZ outside of normal saver seats (that show up on both United.com and Expert Flyer) or if their IT is just that broken. Please let us know if you have success. If I get through to them, I’ll ask for taxes and fees to confirm what I wrote above.

All Nippon Airways

Here are the highlights:

• All domestic itineraries (of up to 4,000 miles) are 15,000 points.
• One-ways are permitted for half the price of a round-trip, because the chart is distance-based. I confirmed this over Twitter:

@DanielTahara That's right Daniel. 🙂 ^R

— Virgin Atlantic (@VirginAtlantic) March 22, 2016

Here are the prices (thanks to MMS for the chart):

ANA has had pretty good availability to the U.S. in premium cabins, and there’s some huge value to be had, since VS charges fewer than 50% more miles for Business Class over Economy and fewer than 100% more miles for First Class. Talk about price compression!

Looking at the NRT-SFO route, which ends up pricing at 60,000/90,000/110,000, that would be $800 (relative to using a 2% card on the $40,000 in spending for the 60,000 points) for Economy, $1,200 for Business Class, and a mere $1,467 for First Class. That’s ROUND TRIP, ANA First Class!

The sign-up bonus alone nets you 105,000 points. So basically it would cost you $400 plus taxes for that award. Not bad, if you ask me.

Even better, ANA is getting rid of fuel surcharges on their own metal, so you don’t have to worry about them on these awards.

A couple of notes. First, they specifically call out a set of destinations:

Destinations include: Japan, USA, Hawaii, Germany, France, China, India and Guam

I find it strange that they explicitly limit them, but they didn’t ask for my opinion.

This also dovetails into a comment that a rep made to me, which was that they only have an agreement for NRT-SFO and not HND-SFO. This seems pretty obvious at first, since ANA doesn’t have a direct flight between HND and SFO, but the important takeaway is that you can’t combine flights across partners, with the exception of Virgin Australia connections to Australia (which is explicitly noted in the terms). Continue reading →