While Alaska’s takeover of Virgin America closed last December, it wasn’t until late March that Alaska shared their plans for the future of the Virgin America brand. Shortly after that they revealed that they planed to discontinue the Virgin America Elevate program as of January 1, 2018.
While I’m sad to see the program discontinued (Virgin America Elevate has some great niche redemptions), I’m happy that Alaska Mileage Plan is the surviving program, as it’s probably the best frequent flyer program in the the world. Furthermore, Mileage Plan remains committed to awarding one mile per flown mile, unlike most other US programs, which have gone revenue based.
While we’ve known that Elevate as such will be discontinued at the end of the year, the end dates for most of Virgin America Elevate’s partnerships have just been announced, as we didn’t have this information before. This includes airline, hotel, car rental, shopping, lifestyle, and other partners.
Perhaps most significantly, it will no longer be possible to redeem Elevate points on Emirates, Hawaiian, Singapore, and Virgin Australia as of September 30, 2017, with the last date on which to travel being January 15, 2018.
Emirates isn’t much of a loss, since Alaska also partners with Emirates, and Singapore isn’t much of a loss, given that most premium cabin redemptions were blocked.
Virgin America Elevate will also be removed as an Amex Membership Rewards transfer partner as of October 31, 2017. Personally that’s not something I care about much, given that the transfer ratio is 2:1, so I tend to think there are much better uses of Amex Membership Rewards points (the much bigger loss was when Virgin America Elevate was removed as a 1:1 SPG transfer partner).
A vast majority of Virgin America Elevate’s partnerships will be ending as of September 30, with a few exceptions, including:
- The Airbnb partnership is ending June 30, 2017
- The points.com partnership is ending October 31, 2017
What I’m most bummed about is that Virgin America’s partnership with Virgin Australia is ending. You could redeem just 45,000 Elevate points for a one-way business class ticket between the US and Australia, or 80,000 points for a roundtrip. That was a phenomenal deal, though nowadays Virgin Australia typically only makes business class award seats available within a week of departure.
On the plus side, at least I recently managed to redeem for this, and had a great experience. If you were eying this redemption, you only have a few months left to book it.
Virgin Australia 777 business class
As of October you’re probably best off just converting your Virgin America points into Alaska miles with a 30% bonus, where they’ll be most useful.
Thanks for the post!
When does the 30% bonus stop?
@ beachfan -- It doesn't. As long as you transfer points you get the 30% bonus, even if it's when the program ends.
Any reason not to transfer my remaining 51k points to AS netting me 66k miles now? I don't see any flights with VX in the near future.
@ Mh -- You do lose some flexibility, but if you're not planning any partner Virgin America redemptions, then you may as well convert them into a more useful currency.
Any idea when it will be possible to redeem AA points for Virgin America flights?
@ Seth -- No clue yet. It's possible that it may only happen once the airline is rebranded as Alaska, and they get all Alaska flight numbers.
Doesn't VA only open upper cabin award space close-in to departure? Was planning on redeeming a one-way SYD-LAX in business in November, but I guess that's not going be possible, unless I'm missing some type of work-around?
@ Alan -- Unfortunately that's correct, as a general rule.
@Lucky - Wow, did not know that.
@ Daniel -- Not especially useful, though, when they only release award seats within days of departure.
Isn't 90,000 for Virgin Australia business class roundtrip? You say 45,000 one-way, but 80,000 roundtrip.
@ Daniel -- There's a discount for booking roundtrip.
Any word on their co-branded credit card?