The Virgin Atlantic WorldElite MasterCard® from Bank of America now comes with 65,00 bonus points. The points breakdown is kind of complicated, so we’ve listed it below:
- 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*
- Earn up to 5,000 Flying Club bonus miles when you add additional authorized users to your card
- Earn 3 miles per $1 spent directly on Virgin Atlantic purchases and 1.5 miles per $1 spent on all other purchases
*To get the anniversary bonus you must spend $25,000 within the year (if you spend $15,00 you’ll get only 7,500 bonus miles). Most people will only earn 50,000 miles as putting $15,000-$25,000 worth of credit card spend isn’t worth the additional 15,000 bonus miles.
You also need to add two authorized users to get the 5,000 point bonus
52,500 miles (the extra 2,500 miles come from the $2,500 it’s necessary to spend to meet the minimum spend requirement) is just enough to fly round trip in economy class from New York City/Boston/Washington DC/Chicago > London twice in economy class, although you’ll need to pay $500 in taxes and surcharges. You can view the full reward chart here.
This is not a bad offer, but the high taxes and surcharges that Virgin Atlantic impose, along with the $90 annual fee that isn’t waived for the first year make it a non-appealing option. There is also no way for points to be redeemed for cash or gift certificates.
Transfer Partners
Virgin Atlantic has a number of transfer partners:
- Air China
- Air New Zealand
- All Nippon Airways
- Cyprus Airways
- Delta
- Gulf Air
- Hawaiian Airlines
- Jet Airways
- Malaysia Airlines
- Scandinavian Airlines
- Singapore Airlines
- South African Airways
- Virgin America
- Virgin Australia
- Gitcombe House (93,000-125,000 Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles per two night stay)
- Hilton HHonors (1 Flying Club mile for 2 HHonors point)
- IHG (1 Flying Club mile for 1 IHG® Rewards Club point)
This offer has no published end date, so if it appeals to you, you’re best bet is to apply for it now before it disappears. It has been around before (sometime in December of 2013), but it didn’t last long.
Read our full review | Apply now | Screenshot of the offer
Hat tip to thepointsguy.