Virgin Atlantic Flying Club (Sky Team) partners with all major transferable credit card point currencies (e.g., Amex MR, Chase UR, Capital One, Citi Thank You and Bilt).
Sweetspots of Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club passes on high fuel surcharges on its own flights and Virgin miles are rarely used for this purpose (except for last-minute premium cabin redemptions).
Virgin miles to book the ANA premium cabins is one of the best redemptions in the miles & points business, but ANA has been stingy with partner seat availability since Covid-19 and one must call to book these flights.
Virgin Atlantic miles (48,500-66,500) can be used online to book Air France-KLM business class flights between the U.S. and Europe/Northern Africa.
I was looking for a business class flight from Washington (IAD) to Paris (CDG) on August 31st 2024 for a friend. I looked for availability on Seats.aero.com and found a matching booking (see the image below). I then headed over to virginatlantic.com to confirm and book the award.
Partner Award Booking problems with Virgin Atlantic Website
The moment I typed IAD to CDG in the search parameters, the webpage would not let me change the currency from money to “points”.
For some reason, the search works for flights from JFK to CDG/AMS,
I was able to see the entire month’s calendar view by simply changing the words in the search bar from “dates” to “calendar” (highlighted in the image below). However, I did not find any available flights for the date I am looking for.
Use Virgin Atlantic Smartphone App to complete partner award booking
I got frustrated after trying multiple times on the Virgin Atlantic website and was ready to use Flying Blue miles to complete the booking. Since I have a lot of Virgin miles, I thought of trying the Virgin Atlantic smartphone app once. I could not believe my eyes when the smartphone app worked perfectly and I was able to search without even logging into the Virgin account (see pictures below).
Conclusion
The Virgin Atlantic website can be very finicky with airport codes and errors out frequently when trying to switch a booking from cash to miles. I wanted to share my experience after successfully using Virgin miles to book Air France/KLM flights via the smartphone app.