The Offer
- Receive up to 75,000 Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles when you sign up for the Virgin Atlantic World Elite MasterCard® credit card from Bank of America. Sign up bonus is broken down as follows:
- 20,000 miles after first purchase
- 50,000 miles after you spend $12,000 or more within six months of account opening
- 2,500 miles when you add an authorized user (up to a maximum of two, or a total of 5,000 miles)
- There is also an anniversary bonus of 15,000 miles that has a spending requirement as well:
- 7,500 miles if you spend $15,000 within the previous year
- An additional 7,500 miles if you spend $25,000 within the previous year
The Fine Print
- Annual fee of $90 is not waived
- Earns 3x miles on all Virgin Atlantic purchases that are made directly
- Earns 1.5x on all other purchases
- Valid until September 7th, 2014
Our Verdict
They offered the same bonus last year, I wasn’t a fan of the offer (and I’m still not) for two reasons:
- The spending requirement of $12,000 is prohibitively high (you could earn $240 in cash back by using a 2% cash back card)
- Virgin Atlantic charge high fuel surcharges
This offer could be interesting if you want a lot of Hilton HHonors points, as you can transfer them at a rate of 1:1.5 to Hilton, meaning you could get 112,500 Hilton HHonors points (139,500 Hilton HHonors points after meeting the minimum spend requirements).
Personally I find Hilton HHonors points pretty worthless, so I’m not going to bother with this offer. One thing I do like about Bank of America is that the cards are churnable and they do combine multiple credit inquiries, so maybe I’ll tack this onto my next Alaska Airlines application. Also, Bank of America are currently offering a $300 sign up bonus on their checking account.
this is really a 127.5k card if you just do all the min requirements to earn ALL the bonuses. and could convert to 191k+ HH points. not as good as when the ratio was 1:2 I believe (unless I’m confusing the transfer partner) but its not nothing.
the req spend of $25k could be knocked out in a month or sooner actually. and if your post is correct about this card earning 1.5x on everything that means 37.5k points just from reg spend in addition to all the bonuses that add upto 90k as part of the new sign up.
so 90 + 37.5 = 127.5k the first year. not a bad haul at all. consider UA which only gives a 10k bonus for $25k spend, and even accounting for their highest public signup bonus of 55k, that’s a grand total of 65k, about half of Virgin Atlantic. plus many of those airline cards arent churnable like this one maybe. not to mention the ongoing 15k anniversary bonus is better than many other cards which have certain yearly thresholds for bonuses/rewards.
I guess I’ll have to go research and see what can actually be done with Virgin Atlantic miles that is cool.
I wounder why you are not fan of this offer… For example, $240 clearly will not buy you 4 (four) LAX to Cancun tickets that you can get via Virgin America redemption at 20,000 points each. Virgin Atlantic points are redeemable with many partners without any surcharges and 12,000 points is nothing if you have couple redbirds.
I already have a stack of other miles from other offers that provide better value than Virgin Atlantic, so really don’t need any more unless it’s a different currency with less fuel surcharges.
Yes, Virgin Australia did remove surcharges so this is definitely a good option if planning to go there.
I read Virgin Australia removed fuel charges, so I wonder — if it was your planned use — this could make Flying Club miles / this card much more valuable.
Granted I somewhat like my short trips to the mall and Walmart, the price of 88000 miles is less than $200. I understand it can net 4 Hilton nights but in most places $50 or little over get me decent accommodation. However, it seems that there are a few relatively good deals at Virgin Atlantic if you live in one of the hub cities, so I’m pretty sure I will catch the right flight for the right price. I like to have a stash of alternative currency next to the classic combo of AA, Southwest, etc.