There’s currently a Virgin Australia promotion being offered that will allow you to fly on Virgin Australia’s amazing business class for around $1,500!
There are two versions of the promotion. The first allows you to earn up to a 40% bonus when transferring points from select partners to Virgin Australia until May 31, 2018. To receive this 40% bonus, you need to transfer a lot of points but more importantly those points need to come from Australian-based rewards systems including:
- Australian American Express Card Members, including David Jones American Express Card Members enrolled in the Membership Rewards program (this offer excludes American Express New Zealand Card Members)
- NAB Rewards
- Citibank
- HSBC Rewards (Platinum and Premier credit card holders only)
- Diners Club Reward
- Card Services Rewards
- Bank of Queensland and Q Rewards (Platinum credit card holders only)
- Suncorp Bank Rewards
SPG 20% bonus
They are also offering a 20% transfer bonus from the following partners:
- ANZ Rewards
- ANZ Business Rewards
- flybuys
- Shangri-La
- Accor hotels
- Hilton
- SPG Starwood
- IHG
- Choice hotels
SPG is going to make the most sense here since it will allow you to fly The Business for cheap.
When they offered this 20% promotion last year, I jumped on it accidentally. I needed to transfer SPG points to Virgin Australia and I had no idea this promo was going on in the Land Down Under until I checked my points balance and saw a hefty bonus.
This is exciting because there’s currently a 35% bonus promotion on buying SPG points. (It also ends May 31st). This means that you could purchase 30,000 SPG miles for $682 (plus tax). If you did that twice (you’d need two SPG accounts with the same address to freely transfer the points), that’s be 60,000 SPG points which converts to 75,000 Virgin Australia points.
With the 20% bonus that’s 90,000 Virgin Australia points which is just 5,500 miles short of being able to fly The Business between Sydney and the US. You could use a third account to purchase those miles or purchase them through Virgin Australia.
I recently flew this product and loved it. The tickets can cost up to $8,000+ so you’d be able to get a ticket for somewhere around $1,500 purely by purchasing points. Or you could go for a Marriott card which would earn you 33,000 SPG points and lower your cost.
Either way, this promotion is one of the best ways to fly Virgin Australia’s business class for a fraction of the price. Booking Virgin Australia with partners like Delta is difficult because they usually only allow you to book rewards a couple of weeks from departure so if you’re trying to plan in advance, this is actually a great opportunity.
H/T: Frequent Miler
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.
