Virgin Atlantic 65,000 Mile Signup Bonus Offer is Back

by Gary Leff

Virgin Atlantic and Bank of America are back with their standard biggest signup bonus. The most recent links for this offer don’t work any longer.

They used to offer the card as an American Express (one of those oddball American Express cards not issued by American Express). Now it’s a MasterCard.

It’s advertised as a signup bonus of up to 65,000 miles but I wouldn’t think about it that way.

Reach rewards faster with up to 65,000 Flying Club bonus miles in the first year with the Virgin Atlantic World Elite MasterCard® credit card from Bank of America.

The offer is:

  • 20,000 Flying Club bonus miles after your first retail purchase
  • 25,000 additional Flying Club bonus miles after you spend at least $2,500 in qualifying purchases
  • Earn up to 15,000 additional bonus miles upon anniversary — 7500 after $15,000 spend and 7500 after $25,000 in spend.
  • Earn up to 5,000 Flying Club bonus miles when you add additional authorized users to your card (2500 per cardholder up to 2)

So adding two authorized users and spending $2500 on the card gets you 50,000 points. There’s a $90 annual fee, and it applies even in the first year. Definitely worth it, in my view, for 50,000 points.

I do not think it’s worthwhile to put the spend on the card required for the additional miles. So think of this as a 50,000 point singup offer.

There are some unique benefits of MasterCard and this card is being issued as a World Elite MasterCard. Those have much better travel benefits than simple World MasterCards do.

One of those benefits is free status with Avis, National, and Sixt car rental programs.

One of the popular uses for Virgin miles in the past was converting to Hilton at one-to-two, 50,000 Virgin miles would yield 100,000 Hilton points. But the ratio nhas been devalued to 1-to-1.5. And Hilton devalued. 75,000 Hilton HHonors points doesn’t especially appeal to me, but some folks will find that useful.

Still, Virgin miles are fairly easy to acquire. Points transfer into Virgin from both American Express Membership Rewards and from Chase Ultimate Rewards.

I’m not a fan of Virgin Atlantic miles, although I have a ton. This offer is strong enough that it has tempted me many times. But I’ve never redeeemed the points. That’s why I put together a list of the great ways to redeem Virgin Atlantic’s miles.

Of course where paid travel would entail a fuel surcharge, Virgin adds that to the cost of an award ticket.

They’ve reduced fuel surcharges on economy awards but those aren’t the awards I’m looking for.

What’s more, departures in a premium cabin originating in the U.K. entail a substantial tax — on top of the surcharges. So Virgin award tickets often aren’t cheap.

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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Comments

  1. If they are that hard to use, the points do not have much value an it’s a waste of a hard hit. If ur looking for a BoA card, go for Alaska airline card instead. Fewer points, but at least they won’t be ageing in your account.

  3. Time to apply again, thanks for the reminder! I have no issues with Virgin Atlantic miles. Just redeemed 200K plus about $2,325 in taxes and fees for two upper class seats MIA-LHR round trip. Not the best redemption level but not bad for a trip that would have cost me in excess of $15K if paying in cash. Had to transfer some points from MR but I took advantage of the 25% bonus at the time so even better.

  4. Gary, thank you for consistently posting this offer, as you do it every time and keep it up to date. I wish they would bring back $100 off Global Entry as a benefit, that just happened once, but it was a nice way to off-set the annual fee up front.

    ABC,
    Apply for both on the same day, BofA inquiries get merged together by Experian, so apply for all of your BofA cards on the same day and get only 1 hit… think of this one as a “freebie”.

    Cheers,

    PedroNY

  6. This offer never “goes away”. If you login to your Virgin Atlantic account, it has an ad for it on the right side of the page when viewing your account. Sometimes you have to refresh the page to get the ad to change to the card offer, but it’s never gone away.

  7. Thanks Gary, I tried using my plethora of SkyMiles for this trip but was only able to locate the flight on Virgin metal but on Delta site from MIA not the return leg. For some reason it was blocked and had no luck waiting for it to open up closer to departure. No problems seeing it on Virgin both ways so that’s when I decided to burn up my Virgin Atlantic miles and make a MR transfer with bonus.

    Now I have way too many Delta miles that I will be using for a trip to Australia from LAX (unless those routes start to dry up…)

  8. Cool! I got this several months ago. Is it possible to apply again and get a 2nd card? Or do I have to cancel the first one first and then apply for the 2nd card?

  9. hello

    having so many cards
    i wd like to know how if there is a site that can track the miles for a consumer.
    thanks

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