This article has been updated to reflect the Virgin Atlantic devaluation on ANA partner bookings that went into effect May 23, 2024.
A general theme: booking partner awards is one of the best ways to use your points. In this tutorial, we’ll walk through how to earn Virgin Atlantic points, how to redeem your points on ANA flights, and our take on this redemption opportunity.
How To Get Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Points
Virgin Atlantic is a British-based airline that is a part of the SkyTeam alliance, enabling flyers to use their points and benefits across a wide range of airlines. Interestingly, despite Virgin Atlantic’s SkyTeam relationships, you’re still able to book ANA flights (Star Alliance) through an exclusive partnership between the two airlines.
Thankfully, Virgin Atlantic points are relatively easy to come by even for non-UK-based flyers. You can get Virgin Atlantic points by transferring your points from any of the following card issuers at a 1:1 ratio.
Even more exciting is the fact that these issuers oftentimes run transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic, typically in the range of 20-30%. Bilt has upended this, exclusively even offering 75-150% transfer bonuses at times.
Using Virgin Atlantic Points on ANA Flights
Virgin Atlantic uses a zone-based award chart to price out ANA tickets. Notably, the prices displayed are for round-trip, meaning a one-way ticket is just half the cost of the listed roundtrip price.
Looking at this award chart starts to tell an enticing story—mainly, this means you can fly from New York to Tokyo for just 47,500 points one way in ANA business class (this is an incredible deal). For context, ANA’s business class is ranked amongst one of the best in the world, offering a fantastic experience on a well-known airline.
How To Find ANA Awards With Virgin Atlantic Points
Unfortunately, you cannot simply search for ANA awards on Virgin Atlantic’s website. To book, you have to call Virgin Atlantic directly and have an agent find and confirm the award spot for you. But, if you have any award search experience, you know that award availability can vary widely, especially for long haul business or first class flights.
Virgin Atlantic’s award availability for ANA flights should reflect what you can find on partners like United Airlines or Air Canada (where you can actually search award availability online). As long as you can find a valid award spot on either website, you should be able to then call Virgin Atlantic to verify, hold, and book the award spot. You can also use Roame to search for these flights, which will help look for options more quickly across all the carriers with the right filters.
While this all sounds exciting in theory, ANA is known to be notoriously tight-lipped about its award availability. At most, only one first-class award seat is released per flight. Furthermore, while business class seats are more abundant, seats are also rapidly scooped up. Given this is one of the best deals around in award travel, get ready to put some energy into scooping up these rare award tickets.
How To Actually Book ANA Flights With Virgin Atlantic
Now that you’ve gone through the exercise of finding a (potentially) eligible flight via United or Air Canada, you now have to call Virgin Atlantic to finish things off. Thankfully, Virgin Atlantic agents are pretty knowledgable.
From United/Air Canada, you can give the representative the flight number and cabin you want to fly in. The Virgin Atlantic representative will then look up the flight and confirm if the award availability is actually there.
Virgin Atlantic can hold ANA awards for up to 48 hours. To be clear, agents request the award space from ANA, and then they have 48 hours before the space drops. 48 hours should be plenty enough time to transfer points; in fact, most issuers allow these transfers to happen instantly.
Here's a step-by-step process on how to do this:
- Give Virgin Atlantic a call at 1 (800) 862-8621.
- Confirm the award availability with the agent and transfer your points to Virgin Atlantic while on the phone with the agent. (Note: transfers are usually instant, but can take up to a few business days)
- Once the transfer is complete, pay for your booking.
- Note the ANA Record Locator and navigate to ANA's reservation page to access and edit your booking.
Please note: as of some new phone calls to Virgin Atlantic (latest February 20, 2024), it seems as though ANA awards cannot be held. Agents can confirm the award exists, but cannot hold it.
What Fees Should I Be Aware Of?
Virgin Atlantic will pass on ANA’s carrier imposed surcharges to you (oftentimes considered the “taxes & fees” portion of tickets). The largest fees come from aviation fuel and insurance surcharges, which can be explored in detail here and are updated every few months.
Additionally, if you need to cancel or change your ANA award ticket more than 24 hours before departure via Virgin Atlantic, there is a $50 fee. Honestly, this isn’t too bad considering the typical volume of points you’ll be dealing with.
Is This A Good Deal?
If we exclude the actual experience of this flight and just compare it against other nonstop business options on reputable airlines, this flight in business class typically runs for almost $4,000 one way from San Francisco and New York. Even comparing against ZIPAIR, there is still outsized value to be gained, suggesting a minimum estimated ~2 cents per point value after considering fuel/fee surcharges.
Other programs will charge the following prices for their tickets on ANA:
- Air Canada: 75k miles in business, 110k miles in first (based on a ticket going from NA to Japan, <7.5k miles)
- United Airlines: 80k miles in business, 110–242k miles in first
Comparably, given the fuel surcharges, you might be willing to use more points/less points depending on how much you’re willing to spend out of pocket. Regardless, these are some fantastic deals, especially considering the product you are flying.
Is ANA First/Business Class Any Good?
Simply put, ANA’s first and business class is known to be amongst the best products available in the sky. I’ve flown on ANA’s old first class and found it to be a spectacular experience from start to finish as well.
Conclusion
While Virgin Atlantic is not necessarily my favorite award program, the ability to redeem ANA awards ranks amongst the best sweet spot award redemptions around. If you’re planning to fly to Japan, this is an option worth keeping in mind, especially considering just how good ANA’s premium class products are. Unfortunately, it can be a bit difficult to find award availability, so it’ll require some blood, sweat, and tears to make these travel dreams come true.
