There is an excellent opportunity to use American Express Membership Rewards to fly on Virgin Atlantic’s new Toronto to London route which launches on March 30. By utilizing two transfer options and a bonus on one of those, you can make your way across the Atlantic in economy class for only 12,000 Membership Rewards points.
In a discussion on Reddit about using Amex Canada points for Virgin Atlantic flights I had commented that the only way you can do this is to convert to Marriott and then to Virgin. And then it was further pointed out by InterestingStretch56 that this can be a really good redemption as you would only need 12,000 Membership Rewards points thanks to the 30% transfer bonus from American Express to Marriott Bonvoy and that is 100% correct!
Toronto to London for 6,000 Virgin Points (12,000 Membership Rewards points)
At the time of writing this article there was quite a bit of availability with Virgin Atlantic Flying Club between Toronto and London at their lowest redemption rate of only 6,000 Virgin Points starting in late April and running right through to the first half of June.
And here’s a close up look at one of the flights on June 11:
6,000 Virgin Points, C$141.55 in fees and your first checked bag included – that’s a quite a good deal!
The same flight outlined above runs $1177.63 (as a round trip) so we need to take half that to give us the equivalent cash price for the above one way award flight and that is $588.82. Subtract $141.53 and you get $447.29 of value for the 12,000 Membership Rewards points transferred to Marriott and and then onto Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Virgin Points. That works out to 3.7 cents per point in value. This represents an extremely good value for an economy class redemption.
Transferring American Express Membership Rewards points to Virgin Points (via Marriott Bonvoy)
For Canadian’s, the easiest way to come by Virgin Points without flying on Virgin or their partner airlines are points transfers from Marriott Bonvoy. The easiest way to come by Bonvoy points is with American Express Membership Rewards (or the Marriott Bonvoy American Express cards)
There is also one other transfer option, and that’s for those who still have the Diners Club Club Rewards Mastercard as you can transfer those points to Virgin Points a 1 to 0.8 ratio.
For this post we are going to focus on the Membership Rewards transfer option as that’s the most common of Amex cards in the wallets of Canadians.
American Express Membership Rewards points transfer at a 1 to 1.2 ratio to Marriott Bonvoy:
And with the aforementioned 30% transfer bonus from American Express Membership Rewards to Marriott Bonvoy you end up getting 1.56 Marriott Bonvoy points per Membership Rewards point:
If you transfer 12,000 Membership Rewards points to Marriott during this promotional period you’ll end up with 18,000 Bonvoy points.
Next a transfer is required from Marriott Bonvoy to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club and those transfer at a ratio of 3 to 1. This means when you transfer 18,000 Bonvoy Points you’ll end up with 6,000 Virgin Points and voila! You have the 6,000 points needed for those award flights outlined above.
It should be noted that if you transfer 60,000 points at once from Marriott to Virgin (or most of the hotel program’s other airline partners) Marriott will kick in an additional 5,000 points or miles. What this means is that for 60,000 points you’ll get 25,000 airline miles or points. This can be used to get four of the Virgin Atlantic 6,000 points awards!
If you have earned those Membership Rewards points with the American Express Cobalt Card’s 5x points earn rate, this redemption represents as little as $2,400 in spending! Taking the 3.7 cents per point in value and multiplying it by 5 points gives you an 18.5% return on eats and drinks spending (and it would be higher if you do the 60K to 25K option)! Tell me what other credit card in Canada has the ability to provide a Transatlantic economy class flight for that little amount of spending? I’ll tell you: none, zero, nada, zilch. Just one more example of why the American Express Cobalt Card is the number one travel rewards card in Canada.
Returning to Canada is another story…
There is one problem with this entire availability alert however and that’s returning to Canada. When departing from the U.K. award flights are subject to even higher fees and taxes and Virgin Atlantic’s 6,000 points awards were very sporadic:
But there were a reasonable amount of award flights in the 10,000 to 12,000 points range but all of these also (including the 6,000 point awards) have 185GBP (~C$345) or more in fees tacked onto them. Not the most ideal return options.
This is where the fun begins for the points & miles community and that is finding the most ideal redemption for the return! It could be something like flying out of Dublin back to Toronto using 13,000 Avios via British Airways or Aer Lingus Club (that’s only as little as 13,000 Membership Rewards points – another great deal!)
Or with Air Canada Aeroplan (which isn’t a bad option out of LHR either as they don’t pass along their own surcharges on Aeroplan awards) but you are looking at ~27,000 Aeroplan points for a one way flight in Economy:
Or, if you happen to be continuing on to the European continent you have lots of lower fee options with Air Canada Aeroplan, Air France KLM Flying Blue and other airline programs.
Let us know in the comments below what your suggestions would be for the return!