Best value way to book new dynamic Virgin seats?

[Matt N]

I’m currently silver status with Virgin but drop to red in a few months. I’ve got one current reward voucher but can get another within a few days (if need be) by spending 50 quid on my credit card.

I’m looking to book shortly (when released) Upper Class return flights to/from Grenada for my wife and I for next October. My initial plan, since the introduction of this awful dynamic pricing scheme, was to pay in points for my UC flight then book a Premium return seat for my wife and use the one current voucher we have to upgrade. However, the crazy points required has somewhat scuppered my plan as I only have about 240,000 points which will not be enough to book my return UC flight if the current September pricing pattern continues into October. I was going to contact the Virgin call centre to enquire but was put off by the warning of waits in excess of one hour so asking the question here instead to see what others think….

So here’s the questions – If I were to trigger our second voucher then pay cash for two return PE tickets (currently priced at about £1,350 each), given that the majority of their current points pricing shows PE far more expensive than UC, could I, Upgrade for free ‘using points’ (because it costs more points to fly PE than UC) or, if not, use two vouchers to upgrade our flights to UC? In either of these two scenarios, I don’t see me touching my current points balance. Any thoughts?? Cheers, Matt

[Rob]

To quote from the other thread:

“My understanding is that to upgrade a booking with points, you now pay the difference between the maximum ‘saver’ points price for the cabin you are upgrading FROM, and the current points price of the cabin you’re upgrading to.

So if you’re upgrading from PE to UC one way between London and New York, and the UC seat is currently selling for 60,000 points you’d pay 60,000-17,500=42,500 points.

So the points value of th cabin you are upgrading from is fixed (if purchased with cash), but the points value of the cabin you are upgrading to is dynamic based on current points selling price.

You can find the min and max saver pricing chart for peak and off-peak dates here https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/flying-club/spend-points/reward-flights/saver-reward-seats.html

Hope that helps!”

[Matt N]

Cheers Rob, they’ve made this unbelievably complicated!