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#928094 by jfenney
01 Nov 2016, 13:05
David wrote:
jfenney wrote:With the rewards flights in economy at only 20000 I cannot see any reward seat sales from here on in either


For the once a year / every other year flyer who collects the majority of their miles from other sources ie Tesco. C/Cards etc, this might not be too bad an overall change

David


Fully agree my 128,000 looks good now for 5 reward flights rather than 1 upper but the big winner I think is Premium Economy good value compared to 70,000
#928097 by Pete
01 Nov 2016, 14:01
Oli Byers from Virgin, and the guy essentially in charge of this, will be joining us soon to address some of your concerns and questions. So post up your queries here.
#928098 by ScoobySu
01 Nov 2016, 14:08
Hi Pete

My query is when is the change over in Reward flight redemptions - is it 13th November in line with the other changes or 16th January as per the screen shot of the PDF that Egtastico posted at 08:12 this morning?

Many thanks

Su
#928099 by NYC123
01 Nov 2016, 14:20
ScoobySu wrote:Hi Pete

My query is when is the change over in Reward flight redemptions - is it 13th November in line with the other changes or 16th January as per the screen shot of the PDF that Egtastico posted at 08:12 this morning?

Many thanks

Su


Isn't it just a flat rate on reward bookings made until the 16th of Jan, and then from that date onward off peak and peak dates are applied?

Thats how I've understood it anyway?
#928100 by adjonline
01 Nov 2016, 14:25
Pete wrote:Oli Byers from Virgin, and the guy essentially in charge of this, will be joining us soon to address some of your concerns and questions. So post up your queries here.


A definitive answer on Tier Point earning rates for Delta/other partner airlines would be great.
#928101 by SlimpyJones
01 Nov 2016, 14:31
adjonline wrote:
Pete wrote:Oli Byers from Virgin, and the guy essentially in charge of this, will be joining us soon to address some of your concerns and questions. So post up your queries here.


A definitive answer on Tier Point earning rates for Delta/other partner airlines would be great.


Seconded.

I'd also like to know, with the greater reliance on specific fare buckets, whether it will be possible to specify your desired fare bucket when using the new booking system.
#928102 by mradey
01 Nov 2016, 14:32
How can a 55% increase in West Coast UC redemptions be justified (I know it *doesn't* have to) and will there be more of these reward seats made available in future (the only way I can see this change being palatable).

Adey
#928103 by jayden
01 Nov 2016, 14:34
My query (although Ive spoken to FC would like to triple check) is regarding TP collection upto the change.

As I mentioned in my previous post I depart on the 7th (Monday) to PBI (via ATL) and return 13th (via DTW) on a redeye arriving into LHR on 14th. Although on a Z fare with TP's on Delta I normally earn 16 on this route which will re-qualify me for this year. I also have a miles booster on this with the 30% bonus boost promotion that went on a while back - which as there are no details may not work under the new system if I fall into no-mans land.

However since I return on the day of the change what I don't want to happen is that the return half falls under the new system or old as I have been told by FC as I leave on the 13th and my trip started before the 13th.

Would just like this confirmed if possible that I'm earning under the old system?
Last edited by jayden on 01 Nov 2016, 15:56, edited 1 time in total.
#928116 by Wilbs
01 Nov 2016, 17:07
I have 8 flights booked for next year, 3 of them on a connecting flights with Delta.
On the old system I would had earned 41 Tiers by Sep 17, enough to renew my AU.
Reading all the comments & what Virgin are saying am I right in thinking that as I have booked my flights before the new rules start I should still qualify?
#928117 by mitchja
01 Nov 2016, 17:16
One question I have is now that Silver FC is harder to obtain / maintain for non-coporate flyers when flying on discounted fares, why have no extra benefits been added for AG members (in fact AG benefits have actually been cut with the reduced bonus miles rate)?

Why is IMHO Flying Club now only essentially aimed at corporate flyers, who often don't even pay for their own fares anyway?

Who's more valuable to VS - the corporate flyer who flies once a year on a full fare or the leisure traveller (like me) who flies ~6 times a year on discounted fares?

Clearly VS's leisure market flyers (and those of us who have to stump up our own fare costs) means nothing to VS anymore with lower earning rates on most routes on all discounted fares. Not to mention higher spending rates on many reward fares (west coast US especially).
#928118 by mikethe3rd
01 Nov 2016, 17:53
My first question is in a similar vein to James'. Sorry Oli!

I fly with VS roughly 5 or 6 times per year and always in UC. Half of my fares are cash and I use(d) mileage upgrades on the other half. If I were one or two tier points short, I would do something to maintain Gold - nothing stupid, but I'd buy an upgradeable M fare rather than using outright miles or flying VX first rather than economy. The reduction in TP earning on Z fares means Gold is now at least an extra flight or two away. However much I’d love to fly with you an extra couple of times per year, it’s just not realistic.

I apologize for the rather long preamble before I get to my question.

I only fly UC. Why should I bother retaining Gold? The only benefit I can see is an extra 30% miles (compared to Silver) which would equate to roughly 25,000 miles over a year. Using your own valuation at 0.6p a mile, my extra custom is worth £150, but it would cost me a good £3-£4K extra to now maintain Gold. Seems pointless.

I’m going to assume there are no planned extra / better benefits for Gold members (although I am intrigued by ‘Reward Flights’ under the Gold tab on your new microsite), and if that is the case, you’ve actually encouraged me to reduce my flying with VS and explore other carriers. I'm hoping you'll be able to persuade me otherwise and reveal additional benefits.

My only other question: when will FlyingCo be briefed about the changes and when will they be able to share updated redemption rates?

Great of you to come to V-Flyer to address our concerns, and welcome to the forum.

Mike
#928119 by gumshoe
01 Nov 2016, 18:25
mitchja wrote:Who's more valuable to VS - the corporate flyer who flies once a year on a full fare or the leisure traveller (like me) who flies ~6 times a year on discounted fares?


The former I'm afraid.

The base fare on an £1800 return UC 'Z' flight to JFK is about £1250.

The same flight in 'J' costs £7250, of which the base fare is £6700.

I have no idea what VS's margins are but even if their costs - which are the same whichever bucket you bought - are only £250 they're still making nearly £6500 on a 'J' compared to £1000 on a 'Z'.

An extreme example, but it's clear why they're seeking to reward those willing to pay the highest fares. Who, yes, will largely be flying on expenses.
#928120 by OliByersVirginAtl
01 Nov 2016, 18:40
Hi everyone,

Firstly thank you to everyone on this forum for taking the time to comment on our recent Flying Club changes. As the SVP of Revenue Management & Loyalty here at Virgin Atlantic, I thought it would be useful to provide some context for the new Flying Club programme. I’ll also try to address some of the questions that you’ve asked here, though given all the changes I’ll focus on the most common questions.

Our aim with these changes from the start has been to make Flying Club better for you, our members. As a long haul airline we have members who fly frequently but also members who fly only every few years, so our challenge has been to make Flying Club better for everyone. While some of the changes looked at on their own might not be seen that way, we believe that the changes are balanced and truly make Flying Club a more rewarding loyalty programme for everyone.

For our members that don’t fly regularly and so earn miles mostly through our partners or credit cards, we needed to make reward seats easier to achieve. By lowering our standard rewards from 35k miles to 20k miles (for a LON-NYC return) and lowering our one way Economy to Premium Economy upgrade from 15k miles to 8.7k miles (LON-NYC) makes these rewards quicker and easier to reach. We introduced a peak season to help us provide more availability during the busiest periods of the year. Seats are still likely to be limited but this will help make a difference to the number we can release today. Our peak season runs for 115 days compared to 250 days for the standard, meaning we have our standard rewards available nearly 70% of the year.

While we have reduced the miles earned on our lowest economy fares, if you earn on partners then it’s more than offset by the reduction in reward seat prices. To reach a standard reward seat, a red member flying to New York on our lowest Economy fares would have previously earned 6,916 miles flying (and needed another 28,084 miles for a reward seat) and now will earn 3,463 miles (and only need another 16,537 miles for a reward seat). We are improving the value of miles earned through our partners, however we acknowledge that for members who are flying frequently in economy and buying our sale fares, earning miles has reduced by 50% while our standard reward price has reduced by 43%. However we felt that increasing the value of earning on our partners and credit cards would help to offset this and makes the programme more rewarding for those members engaging with partners.

In changing our reward seat pricing, our goal was to make Economy and Premium Economy rewards more valuable and an enticing alternative to redeeming in Upper Class. It wasn’t our intention to make an Upper Class reward harder to achieve, which is why we also increased the number of miles you can earn flying through the new earning rates and Gold and Silver bonus. If you’re flying in Economy regularly then it would take longer to save for an Upper Class reward, but the much better value we’re offering for our Economy rewards and Premium Economy upgrades should hopefully make up for it. To put this another way – we wanted to give you more choice on how to use your miles instead of only offering few products that offered great value.

Our change to tier points by multiplying your existing tier points by 25x and also increasing the thresholds (Gold to 1000 Tier Points and Silver to 400 Tier Points) was really more about the future than today. In the future we want to offer more ways that you can earn tier points, through buying other products or earning on partners. With such a low denominated tier point currency it was really difficult to do that. This increase will let us launch more interesting ways to reach status and we already have some in the works that we’ll be announcing in 2017. We did change the earning rates to make is easier to achieve status flying in Upper Class and harder to achieve status flying in Economy. This was to more closely align achieving status with the amount members spend on us. We aimed to offset this with our new economy reward and Premium Economy upgrade prices which will be relevant to a larger group of our economy flyers.

To address some of the questions about Delta: Earning miles will stay the same with Cabin and Tier Bonuses remaining as today (Tier Bonuses remain 50% and 100% as applied to base flown miles). Redemption Prices remain unchanged as well. Tier Points have just been increased by 25x to bring them in line with the new thresholds for Gold and Silver. We will be reviewing this all in the coming months as there are obvious short-term inconsistencies as a result of our changes to flying on Virgin Atlantic.

Finally to confirm the dates of the announced changes: All Earning (Tier Points and Miles) and Miles Plus Money pricing will apply to bookings made on and after 13th November. All Reward Pricing will apply to bookings on and after the 16th January.

Hopefully the above gives you a flavour for our way of thinking and we do really appreciate all of your feedback.

Best wishes,

Oli
#928121 by tontybear
01 Nov 2016, 18:42
gumshoe wrote:
mitchja wrote:Who's more valuable to VS - the corporate flyer who flies once a year on a full fare or the leisure traveller (like me) who flies ~6 times a year on discounted fares?


The former I'm afraid.

The base fare on an £1800 return UC 'Z' flight to JFK is about £1250.

The same flight in 'J' costs £7250, of which the base fare is £6700.

I have no idea what VS's margins are but even if their costs - which are the same whichever bucket you bought - are only £250 they're still making nearly £6500 on a 'J' compared to £1000 on a 'Z'.

An extreme example, but it's clear why they're seeking to reward those willing to pay the highest fares. Who, yes, will largely be flying on expenses.



However, those on corporate deals certainly won't be paying anywhere near the full, published price because it wouldn't be a 'deal' then !
#928122 by gumshoe
01 Nov 2016, 18:51
True. But if their company has a corporate deal it's presumably buying more than one flight a year so its business is far more valuable to VS than a leisure traveller.

As galling as these changes are to leisure travellers who just want the cheapest fare, the reality is VS doesn't make much money out of them. The higher, flexible fares (in whichever cabin) are where the profit's made so VS is naturally seeking to encourage more people to buy them by offering incentives to do so.
#928123 by tontybear
01 Nov 2016, 18:58
QUESTION for Oli

If I were to use miles for an UC reward to XXX can I then use additional miles on the 3k miles = £18 MPM basis to reduce the cash spend on the taxes, fees and (extortionate) VS (100% retained and isn't a tax) surcharge?
#928124 by adjonline
01 Nov 2016, 18:59
OliByersVirginAtl wrote:In the future we want to offer more ways that you can earn tier points, through buying other products or earning on partners. With such a low denominated tier point currency it was really difficult to do that. This increase will let us launch more interesting ways to reach status and we already have some in the works that we’ll be announcing in 2017.


Intriguing...

What about Lifetime Gold? And the 60/80TP benefits?
Last edited by adjonline on 01 Nov 2016, 19:36, edited 1 time in total.
#928125 by Eggtastico
01 Nov 2016, 19:11
lovetoholiday wrote:Saw this update yesterday, we are planning a trip to NYC next August as we have tickets to see Coldplay at the Metlife stadium :D
Was planning on using my EC-PE vouchers for PE outbound (there are 3 passengers and I understand you can split them) and then just use straight miles to fly back in UC.
My OH is FC Gold so we get access to the CH and he has plenty of miles.
Question is should we do the transactions before the 13th or after ? Seems to be plenty of availability at the moment for our dates.
Confused :blush:


Easy.. If you have the miles, you have the vouchers & there is availability, then book it!
Why chance on getting a better deal & maybe losing the availability? Seats now costing less, may make E & PE seats harder to find.
#928127 by gumshoe
01 Nov 2016, 19:40
Oli, thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed explanation of the changes.

I look forward to hearing more next year about new ways of earning TPs. It's always struck me as unfair that US-based VS credit card holders can earn TPs but we in the UK can't.

I fear, however, we can expect "enhancements" to TP earning on Delta. Earning 3 (or now 75) TP for a sub-£100 domestic short hop in F does seem a little too good to be true.
#928128 by NYLON
01 Nov 2016, 19:47
OliByersVirginAtl wrote:Hi everyone,

To address some of the questions about Delta: [...] Tier Points have just been increased by 25x to bring them in line with the new thresholds for Gold and Silver.


Thanks, Oli. I assume this is the same for TPs earned via the US VS Black MC credit card?
Last edited by NYLON on 02 Nov 2016, 14:56, edited 1 time in total.
#928129 by sungod
01 Nov 2016, 20:10
does "A supplementary Flying Club Silver account" remain an AU benefit? or does it go away with the new "Household Account" that is being introduced?

it's unclear how this works, do collective miles accumulate in the AU account? or do they remain separate in another pool? i assume the 'household' TP remain useless for most, but that's nothing new
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