Virgin Atlantic to offer “Mile Booster”

I don’t write too often about Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, as to be honest its not an exciting programme. However, with the announcement today, it maybe a bit more interesting.

Mile Booster is a simple enough product:

• Pay Virgin Atlantic more money
• Get 2x or 3x base mileage extra
• Also get 1000 points for each use.

Miles Booster starts at £0.015 each mile, with a £15 administration charge each time you use it on Virgin Atlantic segment.

Lets look at some real world examples:

• LHR > NYC = 3458 miles – so 3458 x 0.015 = £51.87 + £15 = £66.87
• LHR > HKG = 5994 miles – so 5994 x 0.015 = £89.91 + £15 = £104.91
• LHR > SYD = 10573 miles – so 10573 x 0.015 = £158.60 + £15 = £173.60

In all cases, add 1000 extra miles on for using mile booster. Note that you not be able to “buy” extra tier points.

If the prices look familiar, it’s the same as buying them through the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club service, but without the added bonus of 1000 miles if you use Mile Booster.

You can purchase Miles Booster moles  from the date of booking and up to the first segment is flown – or up to six months after the original date of the first sector. You can either choose to apply it to one segment, or to an entire itinerary.

Another little interesting feature is that Mile Booster will allow you to earn miles on redemption flights too. This is a rare move, and shows a little bit of business if Virgin are going into the miles game with both feet.

If you’re a user of Virgin Atlantic and do redeem on them, this could be useful if you use it tactically (say as a top up for the next redemption).  Combined with a use of a Virgin Atlantic credit card, and you could come out miles on top.

More importantly, as Virgin Atlantic are in deep negotiations with “an alliance”, these miles could become very useful soon elsewhere in the aviation world.

Sadly, you can’t book Mile Booster 0nline – you’ll need to do it on the phone (h0w quaint). Either:

• UK: 0844 874 7747
• US: 1 800 821 543

It’s a very different feature for the UK market in terms of “extra miles for cash”, and could work…

And if you think that’s exciting… I have some Alitalia Frequent Flyer news later! 😉

Something else I want to see working is my donation to the victims of Sandy. You comment in this thread = I donate to a Hurricane Sandy Charity.

There’s a grand total of 23 hours and 30 minutes  to go before this closes so I can get the cash out of the door before the weekend, and I’d love to have 100 comments so I can donate US$100 at least (as well as five Boarding Area bloggers coming together to attempt to raise $1800 by the power of comments).

So, I ask that you please visit my Hurricane Sandy Fund-raising page

Comment in that post – and PLEASE HELP ME TO HELP US ALL DO SOME GOOD!