The Virgin Atlantic Flying Membership program just lately switched from fixed-rate to dynamically priced redemptions, together with new Saver fares, which supply glorious charges on off-peak dates. However as with many loyalty packages, discovering the bottom award costs might be difficult.
Fortunately, Virgin Atlantic presents a useful instrument known as “Reward seat checker” to simplify the method.
Here is the way to use Virgin Atlantic’s reward seat checker to seek out your subsequent nice flight redemption.
Associated: Flexibility is essential: Why I (largely) just like the Virgin Atlantic Flying Membership adjustments
Learn how to use Virgin Atlantic’s reward seat checker
First, log in to your Virgin Atlantic account, scroll down and click on “Reward seat checker” alongside the left toolbar.
On the following display, enter your origin and vacation spot airports and most well-liked month of journey, and a calendar will pop up. Here is what I discovered after I looked for flights from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Worldwide Airport (ATL) to London’s Heathrow Airport (LHR) in Might 2025.
The bottom charges are simple to identify, denoted by the pink Saver tag.
Nevertheless, these might solely seem on the most affordable financial system fares; different nice offers could also be present in increased fare courses.
As an illustration, premium financial system seats can be found Might 5 for under 29,000 factors, even decrease than the financial system value the identical day. Examine the pink tags first, nevertheless it’s price sifting by means of the calendar for different offers.
Every day Publication
Reward your inbox with the TPG Every day publication
Be part of over 700,000 readers for breaking information, in-depth guides and unique offers from TPG’s consultants
Associated: Is Virgin Atlantic premium financial system price it on the A330-900neo?
You possibly can simply toggle between months, too. I discovered much more Saver fares on this route in April than in Might.
One draw back of this instrument is that it solely exhibits award seats on Virgin Atlantic-operated flights; accomplice flights are excluded. When inputting your departure and arrival airports, you may discover that the choices are restricted to locations Virgin Atlantic serves.
One other draw back is that you would be able to’t click on on a date from the reward seat checker calendar and see flight choices on that date or the taxes and charges you’d pay. To do these issues and ebook your journey, you could return to your account web page and click on “Guide reward flight” on the left aspect, then reenter your search phrases.
Nonetheless, the reward seat checker is a good start line — it will possibly show you how to rapidly slim your search by exhibiting you which ones dates and places are most inexpensive. For instance, now that I do know there are low cost Saver seats in each financial system and premium financial system April 2, I may enter that date into the reward flight search and see the obtainable flights, the itineraries and the related taxes and charges.
Associated: Learn how to search flight award availability for the foremost airways
Backside line
In the event you’re contemplating reserving an award flight with Virgin factors, you’ll want to begin the method with the reward seat checker. And at all times test to see if there is a switch bonus you should use to save lots of much more factors.
As an illustration, you possibly can at present get 40% further Virgin factors whenever you switch factors from American Specific Membership Rewards. Because of a switch bonus, one TPG workers member just lately booked a lie-flat seat to London for simply 21,000 factors.
