When you make a Virgin Atlantic booking, even for flights on partner airlines, you’re invited to “boost” your points, via “Points Boost”. It’s completely optional and there’s no hard sell, but if you’re an avid points collector, you may want to give it more than a casual glance.
Virgin Atlantic Points Boost provides one of the cheapest opportunities to accrue Virgin Points, which thanks to the Virgin Red program, have more and more lucrative uses. If you could use more points, here’s how Points Boost works, and why you might want to.
Virgin Atlantic Points Boost
You can always buy Virgin Points via your Virgin Atlantic account, but unless there’s a great sale on points, they can often be very expensive. It’s typically best to earn points from flights, or by transferring credit card points from programs which allow you to convert credit card points into Virgin Points.
Credit card programs which allow you to transfer points into Virgin Points include: Amex Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards and Citi Thank You Points. But anyway, back to Points Boost.
Points Boost allows you to earn more points from flights you have booked, by doubling or tripling your earning, for a fee. Sometimes, there’s even bonus, which brings even more points for less.
Even without a bonus on, Virgin Atlantic Points Boost allows you to buy points at rates lower than most of the best sales on points Virgin ever has. The only catch is that you can’t buy huge numbers, like you can when points are on sale. You can only double or triple what you’d normally earn.
With Virgin Atlantic Points Boost, you’re able to buy points at around 1p per point, so 6,900 points would cost £69 (or similar, but not quite as great figures in USD). You still earn the points you would’ve, but you’re effectively buying more points from the flight at a super discount rate.
How Do You Boost Points?
To “boost” your Virgin Atlantic booking, you login to your Virgin Atlantic Flying Club account, or login with your booking reference. You’ll obviously need to create a Virgin Atlantic Flying Club account to earn points, if you don’t already have one.
Once in your booking, you’ll find the “Points Booster” option just below your flight details and above your passenger details. It can occasionally be easy to miss, but it’s there, and you just click the button
Surprisingly, you can typically even do this when you book a flight with a partner, or use miles too. It can be a great way to recoup some miles used, at a low cost.
Points Boost is a smart move on any booking, if you don’t easily come by millions of points from spending or frequent flying, but Virgin Atlantic Points Boost becomes a “no brainer” during a 40% bonus.
Other than flying on tickets paid for by someone else, there’s no more ‘cost effective’ way to earn Virgin Points than by taking advantage of 3X Points Boost during a 40% bonus. GSTP lays out the math in this article.
Basically, you can earn a bunch more Virgin Points at crazy low prices, which can fuel future upgrades, award flights or flights on top partners like ANA. With the expansion of Virgin Red, as a wider loyalty program currency, it can also fuel things like concert suites on points, and even sausage rolls.
