Flying Club tier VS flight requirements

Are there any requirements to obtaining status with VS in terms of minimum amount of flights and/or TPs earned on VS metal and/or VS issued tickets?

As an extreme example, can I achieve VS gold by booking only DL operated flights direct with DL?

There isn't a requirement to exclusively use on VS metal, or VS issued tickets etc to achieve status. Tier Points (TP) are also earned on partner flights when attaching your flying club number to the reservation.

Yes you can get to VS Gold with flying on just DL, however since their TP devaluation a while back from 75 per sector in DL First to 20 or 40 TP's per sector, it would take quite an effort to do.

If your based in the US and contemplating crediting your DL travel to VS, then the VS Mastercard has the opportunity to get up to 50 tier points per month in spend to help.

This would get you to 600TP with only 400TP to earn by flying. At 20 TP's per sector, that would mean about 20 DL flights at the discounted Z class.

I'm based in the US and made Gold with relative ease flying DL metal 26 times and VS metal 10 times in 2019. I also have the VS Mastercard and VS Gold doesn't get you much on DL (or VS really), especially if work covers your travel. I fly to the UK alot and work isn't paying for Upper Class every time so the Gold comes in handy for lounge access. Assuming you're US based and depending on where you live you'll be transferring a lot on DL so that per segment amount actually adds up pretty quick on a round trip flight. It's easier than One World! ;)

[mitchja]

The only thing that doesn't count when not flying on VS metal is the lifetime Gold status when you have either flown 1 million miles as those miles do have to be on VS metal and other airlines don't count towards that.

Also, the lifetime Gold status after being VS Gold for 10 consecutive years does also come with a mimimim of 7500 tier points (at least 750 per year for those 10 years) which again have to be earned on VS metal.

Thanks for the replies, I thought so on the yearly gold qualification, but wanted to check because I've done a fair bit more DL than normal.

I didn't think about gold for life requirements. Is that just 7500 over the 10 years, i.e. I could have some years with less than 750 as long as the total over 10 is 7500 or greater?

[mitchja]

It reads as if it's over the entire 10 year period and not actually per year. From the T&C's:

2.26.2 The Gold member must have earned a minimum of 7,500 tier points during their consecutive years at Gold status on Virgin Atlantic Airways operated and marketed flights.

2.26.3 Transactions that are excluded from the 7,500 tier point criteria include codeshare flights, manually added tier points including gestures given to members and bonus tier point offers.

I guess that means no gold for life if you have say 12 years consecutive gold with over 7500 TPs on VS. But no 10 year period with over 7500 TPs on VS

It reads as if it's over the entire 10 year period and not actually per year. From the T&C's:

2.26.2 The Gold member must have earned a minimum of 7,500 tier points during their consecutive years at Gold status on Virgin Atlantic Airways operated and marketed flights.

2.26.3 Transactions that are excluded from the 7,500 tier point criteria include codeshare flights, manually added tier points including gestures given to members and bonus tier point offers.

Phew! Yes indeed it's 7500 over that 10 year consecutive period, on VS metal (i.e. not partners, not credit cards, not via offers, etc) so if you made 1200 one year and 500 in another year, on flying VS itself, it doesn't matter in reaching 7500. You don't need at least 750 VS TPs each and every year.

What it does mean is someone who is using partners (DL, ANA, etc) and/or US credit cards to reach AU, no matter how frequently you fly, will not achieve Lifetime that ways. You need bum-in-VS-seat TPs for that. Which is kind of fair enough, imho.