Comments on: Virgin’s Not So Generous Frequent Flyer Program

By: James Crolla

James Crolla — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:25:13 +0000

Cannot agree more with comments on this site. I have over 500k miles and I cannot use them. I have had my gold card renewed twice (each time receiving a free companion ticket), but as experienced by others there is no economical way of using it.

I want to use the miles but cannot, it is frustrating.

Also being a Gold member for 3 years now and flying many upper class and premium economy fares I have never received a free upgrade?

I am getting married in Barbados in November 2011 and we have a wedding party of over 35 guests. I have been looking on the website every day since November dates became available to book, and there has not been one single reward seat available (economy, premium or upper)!

Complete nonsense……

By: Dave London

Dave London — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:00:54 +0000

Just been thu this on trying to use up a companion flight with Virgin. After the effort involved it turns out to be of no value compared to booking discounted flights. I think if you are a business class flyer for work and they pay full fare for you at work, it’s a good one to have perk wise but for the majority its worthless.

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 22:57:08 +0000

I decided to write this to virgin:

Hello,

I’ve been using Virgin for the past year for my business travels. Overall, the lounge and in-flight product that you provide is top-tier. I enjoyed my flights so much, that I acquired a Virgin black card to be able to acquire rewards much more quickly.

With that being said, it’s a bit disappointing to have such a restrictive frequent flyer program. Every time I’ve wanted to use my miles (or FlyingCo miles), I’ve met nothing but restriction upon restriction. There have been some flights where I had to call every couple of days to ensure that I could spend my miles on an upgrade.

On today’s flight, even though there are 5-6 seats available in Upper Class, I was turned away at the ticket desk to use miles for an upgrade. I was even willing to pay the fare difference to make my ticket an upgradable fare class.

Overall, here are my complaints:
1) Unable to make an upgrade request (or check upgrade availability) online
2) Calling the FlyingClub Gold hotline, there is still a 10-15 minute queue
3) Unable to queue up for standby upgrades

Here would be an ideal situation:
While booking my ticket online, I could see if upgrades are available for miles. If they were available, I could spend the miles during my checkout process for the ticket. If upgrades were unavailable, I could elect to enter a wait-list queue. The queue would favor higher-tier FlyingClub members over one another (a great perk to achieving FlyingClub Gold status).

I understand that airline revenue management is a complex topic. I’m writing to give you the perspective of a semi-frustrated frequent flyer (one who is banking miles because they’re impossible to spend). I love the milage bonus that you get with obtaining Gold status — it just sucks that it’s nearly impossible to spend the miles.

By: David Immelman

David Immelman — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:41:48 +0000

I agree 100%. I too have been flying Virgin between SA and UK out of loyalty to the “underdog” however, as is too often the case they seem to have forgotten how they got there in the first place. Now it is a case of smoke and mirrors. Has anyone out there found an alternative?

By: Steve J Bosa

Steve J Bosa — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:39:22 +0000

I totally agree with you. Reading your post echoes EXACTLY what I’m going through. I don’t even have to bother with Virgin again. I really…I mean really used to love Virgin. I have flown with them exclusively to the States since 1995 and it’s still a hustle trying to get a booking using miles. I have discovered the best airline ever, they won’t sell you that exit seat, they will upgrade you without having to pay a ridiculous tax, they will upgrade the ticket regardless of fare class it was bought in and they will even come to your seat in coach and call you by name and ask if there’s anything they can do to make the flight better. Emirates has really done it for me. I’ll just use my last miles for Virgin and say adios!
please try to compare the Skywards program from Emirates with Virgin’s and you will see the difference. It’s so much easier to reach Gold and retain it, they even let you use many airport lounges while you’re Silver. With virgin, there is no lounge that you can use anywhere while you’re silver.
I could go on and on but I guess it’s useless now…and Oh, did I mention they now charge extra for the second bag on Transatlantic flights?

By: Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 03:27:42 +0000

Do not, I mean, DO NOT get me going on the absurdity of fare rules. I agree entirely. And heaven forbid you accidentally misspell your name. I’ve got an entire blog post in me about a case where that happened with my wife’s ticket…and…and…let’s just say sanity ruled in the end, and I wasn’t forced to buy another ticket on a different flight since ours was going to be “full” even though they weren’t going to let her on. Maybe me wish for an aspirin

By: Tom Anthony

Tom Anthony — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 08:38:33 +0000

Great advice! I love Virgin also, always using them for flying home to London when I lived in NY.
I have saved up miles with them, but never tried to cash them in, I always assumed it would be easy.
I’m not sure if the miles expire, so I keep meaning to use mine for a ‘cheap’ trip somewhere. Looks like it won’t be as easy as I thought.

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 02:08:03 +0000

My goodness. And for me, it’s not just the frustration of frequent flyer program challenges and companion tickets (though I, too, have been quite frustrated with those issues); rather, it’s just the insane overall complexity of airline fares and rules.
I remember just how immensely grateful I was when traveling by train in Europe (and, to some extent, even in the U.S.). Fares are more straightforward, even loyalty programs seem substantively less confusing.
I sometimes wonder if airline programs and pricing is set by the same people who work on tax codes…