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I am thinking about starting to collect virgin points. (I have always done avios and now on the 2 year). I have a number of vietnam airline flights booked and will soon have lotus miles from these and I have some miles and more points. As they are all part of skyteam is there a way I amalgamate them if I start to collect virgin points. I have read about skyteam but I am not sure i understand how it works if points spread in different schemes but part of the same alliance. Just to help me decide whether to start collecting virgin points or not…Thanks.
No, you can’t merge points across any airline schemes in any alliance apart from the Oneworld colective of BA, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Qatar, Finnair
Virgin is particularly poor at status points from flying other airlines, for example a 500 mile economy flight on DL only gets you 5 status points on Virgin.
Use this calculator https://miles.travel-dealz.com/en with some sample routes to see what you earn on different Skyteam. Also look on Flyertalk for the Skyteam page for lots more info.
Thanks. I had a look and maybe I am being daft as there was lots of info. If I gain points from all my vietnam airlines flights then I can only use their points with that airline and the same with miles and more…I won’t likely get enough lotus miles to get a status with them as i see you can get status matches.if I open up a skyteam account do I use that number when booking flights ?
Would I be better to join virgin frequent flyer if I am getting the credit card and give vietnam that frequent flyer number rather than lotus miles and accrue all the points in virgin as I am more likely to book future flights with them and keep all the points in the one frequent flyer programme? Sorry for the questions but only have a brain for avios to date…
When you fly a Skyteam airline you can collect points on any of the Skyteam programmes, but you can’t then move them between programmes.
So you have to look at the earning (including booking classes) and burning rates of the programme on the airlines you want to use.
If an airline’s FFP is particularly good then you may collect all your miles with them but never actually fly them. Yes it’s best to stick with one programme per alliance, unless you have a specific plan to use them (or you collect so many miles that you can build up a balance / status in several programmes). If the Virgin credit card makes sense for you, then Virgin should probably be your skyteam FFP of choice
wheretocredit.com will give you a good idea of what to do. Generally, an airline’s own FF scheme is going to give you the maximum reward available, but it’s then all to play for after that. The website above lets you compare, for a given bucket and airline, where to credit.
@AL Have you looked at the link I posted above. I think it’s much better than WTC these days. More accurate and updated.
@jintycat only you can make that decision but booking airlines other than Virgin with virgin’s points can be problematic to say the least. AF/KLM are a nightmare, Delta flight redemptions just increased the taxes by £1000. So you need to decide now what your redemption plans are for the future which I know is difficult.IIRC you can also phone up other airlines and USE your virgin points too, not available onnline
IIRC you can also phone up other airlines and USE your virgin points too, not available onnline
No, you can phone Virgin and book some other airlines in the alliance. Other airlines wont even know what virgin points are.
Plenty of articles online to help. https://www.headforpoints.com/2023/08/06/how-to-spend-virgin-points-on-skyteam-flights/
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