Virgin Atlantic Flying Club is charging a huge surcharge for Delta One redemptions to Europe, but most members will not be affected

The Virgin Atlantic Flying Club program has reduced the value of business class tickets to and from Europe on Delta One without notice, but the move is unlikely to impact many members.

On most dates, Delta One awards booked through Virgin Atlantic Flying Club will continue to cost 47,500 Virgin points from the East Coast and Central U.S. to Europe and 67,500 Virgin points from the West Coast to Europe.

However, Virgin Atlantic has now introduced peak award pricing, increasing award points to 57,500 points from the East Coast and Central US and to 77,500 points from the West Coast to Europe (excluding flights to and from the UK, which already qualify for these peak and off-peak pricing).

Read on to learn more about Virgin’s recent devaluation of Delta One award flights.

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Virgin Flying Club increases Delta One award prices and charges a massive surcharge

If you want to book Delta One tickets through Virgin Atlantic, pay attention to the peak and off-peak season dates.

Peak dates for 2024 and early 2025 are:

• 1 to 3 January 2024
• 22 March – 15 April 2024
• 16 June – 2 September 2024
• 25 October – 5 November 2024
• 7 Dec 2024-5 Jan 2025

Adding peak dates with a 10,000 mile price increase for a business class ticket to select destinations within a single region does not represent an unreasonable devaluation and remains a competitive redemption price across the Atlantic.

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What is causing a stir is the fact that Virgin is now charging a high surcharge from the airline. The total fees, taxes and surcharges amount to over $1,000 per person per way in business class.

As a result, you can now expect to pay over $2,000 in fees, taxes and surcharges for a round-trip business class flight on Delta booked with Virgin points. This is exactly the same as the fees Virgin charges for Flying Club member redemptions, which the company itself operates. Before the devaluation, Delta One flights from the US to mainland Europe cost customers just $5.60 in taxes and fees.

This additional surcharge appears to only affect business class tickets, as economy award seats continue to be free of charge and can be booked for $5.60 in taxes and fees.

If you want to book a Delta One flight through the Delta SkyMiles program, which does not charge surcharges, you can easily book business class flights to Europe and expect to earn up to 375,000 SkyMiles per person per flight.

Related: Dynamic pricing vs. fuel surcharges – which is the lesser of two evils for your next redemption?

Why will this devaluation not affect most members of the Flying Club?

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club is a transfer partner for all major transferable credit card currencies and often offers transfer bonuses and reward flight promotions, so there are some great deals to be had when you use Virgin points to fly from the US to Europe. For example, I flew from New York to London in April for just 5,000 Virgin points.

But when it comes to checking Delta One award flight availability on Virgin, there are no award flights.

I have regularly monitored Delta One’s availability for transatlantic flights using Virgin points over the past six months. Across the entire 12-month schedule, there have been at most a handful of dates available, with most of the dates available from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) to Iceland’s Keflavik Airport (KEF), a flight of just 5 1/2 hours.

This year, availability to the UK and continental Europe has been limited mainly to (very) off-season dates, such as the depths of winter, when you should have no trouble finding available flights on other airlines, especially if you have transferable credit card points.

Related: 10 no-annual-fee credit cards that let you earn transferable points

For example, one of the only options I found in my search for Delta One availability to Europe over the next 12 months is from JFK to Portugal’s Lisbon Airport (LIS). Although you’ll pay less than 48,000 Virgin points for this, you’ll pay over $1,000 in taxes, fees and surcharges.

If you want to use Virgin points to fly to Portugal in January instead, you can save more than $700 in surcharges by booking Air France’s business class option.

If you prefer Delta over Air France, you can book the same flight for 20,000 more miles through the Air France-KLM Flying Blue program, saving around $1,000 in fees, taxes and surcharges.

Again, there are no changes to prices for Delta-operated economy class flights to the UK (where Virgin points can still be put to good use) or to continental Europe, as these can easily be booked online. Fortunately, economy awards have been spared this new surcharge, so you can generally expect to pay less than $200 in total in fees, taxes and surcharges when flying Delta economy to Europe via the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club.

Note that Delta charges $5.60 in taxes and fees for flights from the US to Europe, but flights from Europe to the US are subject to country-specific taxes and fees.

Unfortunately, Delta’s Premium Economy product still cannot be booked with Virgin points.

Bottom line

Devaluations are an unfortunate reality in the points and miles industry. We recommend redeeming points and miles soon after earning them rather than saving them for a rainy day.

Normally, it would be unforgivable for Virgin Atlantic Flying Club to impose a carrier-imposed surcharge of over $1,000 per way without prior notice.

In reality, however, this change won’t affect 99% of Flying Club members, as there are virtually no Delta One flights that can be booked with Virgin points anyway. In the unlikely event that you find an available seat, it will likely be on a non-peak day (so the new, increased peak prices won’t matter). Not to mention, you can probably book the same Delta flight through Flying Blue and save hundreds of dollars.