The Offer
American Express and Virgin America are running two promotions that can be combined.
- Receive a 25% transfer bonus when you transfer American Express Membership Rewards points to Virgin America (normally ratio is 200 MR points to 100 Virgin America points, this makes it 200 to 125)
- Receive Gold Status with Virgin America when you transfer 80,000 or more MR points to Virgin America
The Fine Print
- Transfer bonus valid until September 30th, 2016
- Status bonus valid until October 31st, 2016
- Transfers for status bonus can be done in multiple transactions during the promo period
- Status will be awarded for qualifying Card Members within 14 days of transfer of 80,000 points and will remain in effect until January 1st, 2018.
- For each conversion of points into the Frequent Flyer program of a U.S. airline, a fee of $0.0006 per point, with a maximum fee of $99, will be charged to your Card account. We charge this fee to offset the federal excise tax we must pay on such conversions
Gold Status
You can see a full list of the benefits that gold status gives you here.
Our Verdict
Virgin America points have a fixed value of 2.2¢ when redeeming them for domestic Virgin America flights, which means you’d be getting 1.375¢ per point in value from your American Express points. That’s not terrible value, but it isn’t fantastic either. Gold status isn’t worth much unless you have regular paid flights with Virgin America anyway and in that case you might already have Gold status.
American Express frequently offer transfer bonuses, you can view a full list of these bonuses here. Below you can view the bonuses they have previously offered on Virgin America:
- February 10th – March 10th, 2016: 50% bonus
- September 8th – October 8th, 2015: 25% bonus + gold status when you transfer 80k or more MR points
- January 15th – February 15th, 2015: 35% bonus
- April 16th – April 30th, 2014: 30% bonus
- January 17th – January 31st, 2014: 40% bonus
- September 16th – September 30th, 2013: 40% bonus
- October 27th – September 2nd, 2012: 30% bonus
- March 19th – March 26th, 2012: 30% bonus
They also offered the following targeted bonuses:
- September 15th – October 15th, 2014: 50%
- November 7th – November 21st, 2012. 50%
As you can see they offered the same bonus last year at this time and also offered a 50% bonus just this February – March. Personally I’d rather a 50% bonus instead of 25% and no gold status, but that really depends on you. You can also currently get a bonus of 50% when you transfer to Avios (250:300) and a 50% bonus when you transfer to Plenti (500:750).
Hat tip to View From The Wing
