In sadly unsurprising news, Virgin Atlantic has finally done the seeming inevitable and devalued one of its few remaining sweet spots. Thrifty Traveler has spotted that if you’d like to book Delta flights to Europe in business class, those will now require more miles in most cases.
That’s not the truly bad news though. The biggest hit comes in the form of increased taxes, fees and surcharges which are now a whopping $1,000+, not to mention the fact that this was an unannounced overnight devaluation.
As a recap, when there was award availability on Delta you could book one-way business class flights to Europe for 50,000 Virgin Atlantic miles + only $5.60 in taxes and fees.
The pricing will now vary depending on the length of the flight and whether you’re traveling at standard or peak times.
On the low end of pricing, the east coast to/from Europe will now cost 47,500 miles each way at standard pricing, so a slight reduction from before. However, in the past the pricing was the same wherever you were flying to/from in the US. It’ll now be more expensive if flying to/from the west coast as you’re looking at 67,500 miles if flying from, say, Los Angeles. That’s a 35% increase, but that’s not the worst of it.
There’s a new peak rate which costs 57,500 miles each way between the east coast and Europe and 77,500 miles between the west coast and Europe – increases of 15% and 55% respectively. But even that’s not the worst of it.
The truly awful part of all of this is that taxes, fees and surcharges now top $1,000.
While mileage increases can be somewhat mitigated by taking advantage of transfer bonuses, that’s not going to help much when you have a $1k+ copay.
Thankfully economy award pricing between the US and Europe for Delta flights booked via Virgin Atlantic hasn’t changed – that’s still at 30,000 miles +$5.60. That said, that’s still quite a few miles versus what’s sometimes charged via other programs to/from Europe.
If it’s any consolation, finding award availability on Delta via Virgin can often be an exercise in futility, so actually seeing this devaluation in the wild might not be too common depending on where you want to fly and your dates. I had the hardest time finding any availability to obtain a screenshot for this post. As Nick noted this morning though, there’s currently a ton of award availability to Europe on Air France and KLM when using Virgin Atlantic miles. While the taxes, fees and surcharges on those flights aren’t as low as one might like, at ~$300 it’s much more reasonable than the $1k to fly on Delta. Plus you’d get a Delft house by flying with KLM.
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