Hawaiian Airlines Jacks Up Redemption Prices for Virgin Atlantic Flights

by Gary Leff

Hawaiian Airlines has had one of its best redemption values gutted, though the program remains the only way to book award tickets on Virgin Atlantic without paying egregious fuel surcharges.

  • Business class between the U.S. and U.K. was 100,000 miles roundtrip. Period. No regions, no fuss.

  • Business class beyond the U.K. — to anywhere else Virgin flies — was 140,000 miles roundtrip.

Now, with no notice whatsoever, Hawaiian has broken things up into more regions and increased the price of awards.

Here is the new business class award chart.

All good values end, it has always been that way. That’s why you jump on the great deals while they’re around, rather than waiting to use them at some point in the future. Of course there will be more great deals that come along.

But to make changes of this sort without any advance notice (or even notifying your members when you do it!) is the epitome of a poor showing and a lack of class on the part of a frequent flyer program. Shame, shame.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Pingbacks

  4. […] Hawaiian Airlines (HA) increases the number of miles required to book a ticket on Virgin Atlantic via View from the Wing. Hawaiian has been a good option to book Virgin Atlantic (VS) and avoid the high taxes and fees. Well, maybe not so much any more. It seems HA has increased the miles required to book VS award seats without notice this week. It now takes 125K or 160K miles to book a Virgin Atlantic Upper Class seat to London (depending on where you depart) – a big increase. It is believed taxes and fees are still reduced with this redemption path.  I wrote this past week how if you have Virgin America Elevate points, premium class on other Virgin partners is a decent redemption choice – if you can stomach the fees and value Virgin premium class more than the amount of those fees.  If you just want to book Virgin Atlantic, shifting miles via Hawaiian Airlines (most likely from AMEX’s Membership Rewards) is another path that now costs even more miles but less out of pocket cash. […]

Comments

  2. Is it just me or does the new chart make no sense? Is it where the trip starts to the UK only or can I go from anywhere to one of those places?

  3. Also, I’m confused by this. So it is a combination of the two? I’ve read the website and it’s not clear. If I want to go LAX to LHR, it’s 160K. If I want to go LAX to BOM, is it 160K plus 125K then? Or LAX to SYD via LHR would be 160K plus 160K?

    I assume so, based on Virgin Australia routes from LAX being 200K in business.

  5. So much for thinking about getting the Hawaiian cards or flying VS. Although unfortunate new, thanks for the update.

  7. Folks, it always USED TO BE from your origin to anywhere in their system. Now… not 100% clear. I haven’t booked one of these since the change, just working on an award. I’m currently ~ 12 hours from my usual time zone so haven’t called Hawaiian yet but I assume it is not additive. I assume it’s from origin to a specific region and chart shows the price, as before. But that’s not 100% certain until I book one!

  8. @ArizonaGuy – I never spell check. I have my pluses, my attributes. And I have my failings. Lack of spell check (or even re-reading a post before hitting publish :P) is sadly one of them.

  10. I just applied for the HA cards yesterday to build toward this award. Ugh. Guess I’ll just have to send to HHonors.

  12. Gary don’t worry about Jeff. He has been going overboard trying to promote his site everywhere recently. Not that there is anything original on it….

Comments are closed.