Maximizing A Transfer Bonus To Virgin

Want to get more from your credit card points? Taking advantage of a transfer bonus is the perfect opportunity to get incredible deals on award flights!

WHAT IS A TRANSFER BONUS?

A transfer bonus is when the bank gives you additional points/miles for transferring points/miles to one of their transfer partners.

For example: If there is a 30% transfer bonus, and you transfer 1,000 points, the bank will actually transfer 1,300 points on your behalf. They are giving you 30% extra. So if an award flight costs 50,000 points, you only need to transfer 39K points (50,000/1.3 = 38,462 – then round up to nearest 1,000).

I have seen transfer bonuses range from 5% – 40%+. I’ve seen these given by American Express, Capital One, Chase, Citi and BILT.

MAXIMIZING TRANSFER BONUSES TO VIRGIN

Virgin Atlantic is part of the SkyTeam alliance. This means, you can sometimes find other airlines (that are in the SkyTeam alliance) award flights on Virgin Atlantic.

Many times booking a SkyTeam member award flight on Virgin Atlantic is a better deal than booking a Virgin award flight on Virgin. Why? Because Virgin has some incredibly steep taxes/fees.

Some common ones to look for are: Air France/KLM, ITA Airways, Korean Air and Delta.
In my experience, Air France/KLM is your best option when looking for 2+ seats.
I’ve only ever seen 2 award seats on ITA via Virgin. And with Korean Air, it’s typical to only find 1 seat in business, but more for economy.
With Delta you can find more seats, but especially in business class, the offerings are sparser in general.

FINDING A DELTA ONE FLIGHT ON VIRGIN ATLANTIC

Seats.aero makes finding Delta One (Delta’s business class) seats on Virgin Atlantic super easy. When you go to their site, simply click the “Tools” on the top navigation bar. From the drop down, select “Delta One Finder.

To narrow it down to flights to/from Europe, enter “50,000” in the search bar.
This also shows flights to Lima.

Then you’ll need to head over to Virgin Atlantic’s site to see if the award seat is still available…

So if you were able to use the 30% transfer bonus to Amex (from Capital One or Chase), you only need to transfer 39K American Express points for the Delta One award flight instead of 50,000.

FINDING AIR FRANCE/KLM FLIGHTS ON VIRGIN

This method is a bit more hit or miss. But can yield some great results.

First, go the the Air France website (you will need to login to search award flights).
You want to search for their cheapest award dates.
How do you do that? When searching on the desktop, leave the “date” field BLANK.

When you leave the date field blank, it will show you month by month. Then you can click into that month and find the cheapest option…

Here we see that March 2 has a 50K miles option.

So now we want to head over to Virgin Atlantic and see if they are offering that same award flight. WHY would we buy it at Virgin Atlantic when Air France already has it so cheap?

To take advantage of the transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic…

And Virgin does have the SAME flight. The one way business class is 48,500 miles + $296.
WITH a 30% transfer bonus, you only need to transfer 38,000 points to Virgin for this ticket.

FINDING ITA FLIGHTS ON VIRGIN

ITA has several non stop options to Rome. The ones I was able to find business class award seats for (on Virgin Atlantic) were LAX – FCO (Rome) and IAD (Washington, Dulles) to FCO (Rome). I have never been able to find more than 2 seats.

My trick to finding dates? Luck. I simply chose the furthest dates out to check for availability…

As you can see, this business class award ticket from Dulles to Rome (one way) is 75,000 miles + $5.60. You can see that it’s “operated by ITA Airways”. With the 30% transfer bonus, you’d need to transfer 58K points. The ITA business class cabin looks amazing, so this is really a steal!

Also found lots of options for LAX – FCO. Again, only 2 seats.

FINDING KOREAN AIR FLIGHTS ON VIRGIN

For the most part, you can use search tools to find Korean Air award flights to purchase on Virgin.
You can find my favorites and short tutorials here.

Finding more than 1 business class seat will be nearly impossible. But the economy options are plentiful. Search from JFK, SFO, LAX, SEA to ICN (Seoul).

Flying Korean Air one way in economy is only 31,000 miles + $28.70. BUT with the transfer bonus, you’ll only need to transfer 24,000 points. WOW! That is a steal!

MAKE SURE YOU ARE EARNING THE RIGHT POINTS

I hear from people allll the time that they think they can transfer their Delta American Express points.
You can NOT. Those are sadly not transferable. You want to make sure you are earning transferable points so you can book with the credit card transfer partners.

My favorite Capital One cards to earn transferable points:

Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card – this one is best for someone that wants lower annual fee
Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card – this one is best for someone who travels often & can use the $300 travel credit and that wants lounge access

American Express Cards that earn transferable points:

The Platinum Card® from American Express
The Business Platinum Card® from American Express
American Express® Gold Card
American Express® Business Gold Card
American Express® Green Card
Amex EveryDay® Preferred Credit Card

My favorite Chase points that earn transferable points:
Chase is a bit more confusing. They only have 3 cards that can transfer points.
BUT they have many cards that can EARN points.
Here’s my favorite Chase cards for earning transferable points.

HOW TO TRANSFER YOUR POINTS

There are step by step instructions for Chase, American Express and Capital one here.

One thing I really like about American Express… when you go to transfer your points – it does the calculation for you. In this example, it shows… if YOU transfer 38,000 points with the 30% bonus… AMEX will transfer a total of 49,400 points. So you don’t have to do the math. NOT all banks do this.

HOW CAN I TELL WHEN THERE’S A TRANSFER BONUS

Timing: Unfortunately the transfer bonuses don’t have a set schedule, so it’s impossible to time them.
I always announce them on instagram stories and in my newsletter.

You can also look in your credit card account for current bonuses. Login. Click on your points. Go to the section where you would transfer your points.

The Transfer partners will include an “offers” section. This is where the transfer bonus info is.

I personally never recommend transferring points/miles speculatively. Once you transfer your points it is permanent.

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