Virgin Atlantic Award Seat Checker: Guide and Benefits

It’s no secret that Virgin Atlantic Flying Club offers some of the best award rates and sweetest sweet spots of any airline loyalty program.

One-way fares from the East Coast to the Maldives starting at 13,500 points in economy? Check. One-way business class fares from the West Coast to Japan for 52,500 points? Check.

These are just a few examples of Virgin’s sweet spots and reasonable award rates. If that wasn’t already enough, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club is one of the few airline rewards programs that make finding saver award space even easier, thanks to the Virgin Reward Seat Checker.

If you want to simplify award searches and make finding great redemptions a piece of cake, you need to use Virgin’s Reward Seat Checker. Let’s look at how the Virgin Reward Seat Checker works and some of its best uses when it comes to finding sweet spots.

How to Use the Virgin Reward Seat Checker

You don’t need an account with Virgin Atlantic to use its Reward Seat Checker. However, you do need a Flying Club account if you want to book award flights with Virgin. So if you don’t already have one, go ahead and create a Flying Club account.

From there, you can navigate to the Reward Seat Checker portal from within your account or using this link.

Once you’ve clicked the link, you’ll be directed to the Reward Seat Checker portal.

Here, you’ll be able to input your departure and arrival airports, as well as the month you’re looking to fly in.

Currently, you can select any of the following airports as your point of departure:

Your destination options will vary depending on which departure airport you select.

After you’ve selected your origin and destination airports, select the month you want to fly and hit the “Find reward seats” button.

Once you click the search button, you’ll be provided with a calendar overview of all available award fares. The price shown is for a one-way award fare and is the lowest available rate on any given day of the month. You’ll see prices for economy, premium economy and upper class fares, allowing you to filter out the cheapest dates to fly on. Some of the prices will have red marker tags next to them, indicating that they are saver award fares, offering the best value for your points.

If you don’t like the rates you’re seeing or if you have availability across multiple months, simply click either of the buttons in the top right-hand corner of the screen to navigate a month forward or backward.

Similarly, when looking for award space for your return journey, you can click the reverse arrows at the top of the screen.

Once you’ve found award space and rates that work for you, click the red “Find my reward seats” button at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. This will open a pop-up message where you’ll need to click “Find my reward seats” once more.

Conveniently, the Virgin award flight search tool will automatically open in a new window, making it easy to refer back to the Reward Seat Checker if you want to change dates or if you run into any pricing issues.

According to the award search we ran for Boston to London above, we could fly for 12,000 points each way on Saturday, August 2, and back on Saturday, August 9. We can now input these dates into Virgin’s search tool, making sure to select a round-trip journey.

If you haven’t already logged into your account, you’ll be redirected to do so at this point. Similarly, if you run into an error code when performing award searches with Virgin, it can be that you’ve been automatically logged out and need to log in again.

Keep in mind that when you select round-trip itineraries, the price shown for the first flight includes the price of the return flight. As you can see below, we have saver award availability for all classes, including economy for just 12,000 points each way (24,000 points round-trip).

Once you’ve selected your outbound flight, you’ll then be prompted to select your return flight. As you can see below, we’ve already selected economy as a round-trip fare, so it displays a price of 0 points to add the return fare.

In this case, the Virgin Reward Seat Checker made it easy to predetermine which dates to fly on, making the entire award search and booking process quick and easy.

You can easily copy and paste the URL of the Reward Seat Checker search pages to add them as a bookmark on your device. This way, you can stay on top of any changes in award seating pricing, allowing you to keep a closer eye on award rates.

Virgin Reward Seat Checker: Best Uses and Sweet Spot Redemptions

Unfortunately, the Virgin Reward Seat Checker works for Virgin-operated flights only. That means you won’t be able to search for award space with Delta Air Lines, Air France-KLM or any other SkyTeam alliance airlines.

Nevertheless, the tool remains incredibly useful for finding Virgin award space, including economy, premium economy and business saver level fares. It also offers the opportunity for those without premium memberships with seat aggregators, such as seats.aero, to make their award searches quick and efficient.

Here are some of the best uses and sweet spot redemptions you can find using the Virgin Reward Seat Checker. Keep in mind that these are just a few examples of the many ways you can take advantage of this tool to score low-priced award seats. Likewise, as you can only search for Virgin-operated flights through the Reward Seat Checker, the following sweet spots don’t cover partner-operated flights.

Dubai

With the help of Virgin’s Reward Seat Checker and competitive saver award fares, you could fly to Dubai for just 24,000 points round-trip.

You’ll need to find saver award availability on all legs of your journey to do this, but it’s well worth the effort.

You’ll want to begin by looking for saver award space on the London to Dubai (DXB) leg of the journey. Simply input London as the origin airport and Dubai as the destination airport, and select the month you’re looking to fly.

In this case, there are a ton of saver award fares between London and Dubai for as low as 6,000 points each way.

Now, click the “reverse” button to check saver award space for the return leg from Dubai to London.

If you look at the examples above, you’ll see that there’s saver award availability for the outbound leg for the entire month, while for the return leg, there are saver award fares from Thursday 8 through Wednesday 21.

With these dates in mind, we can now search for saver award availability for New York (JFK) to London. Input the new origin and destination airports and search for the same month again.

Note these dates down and now check for saver award space on the return leg from London to New York.

Flights to London from the East Coast are typically overnight, so we’ll want to fly the day before our flight to Dubai departs. With these dates in mind, check which saver award fares overlap and decide on your dates. For instance, we could fly from New York on Wednesday, January 10, and return on Wednesday, January 21.

Navigate to Virgin’s search engine, select “Search for Reward Flights,” input New York and Dubai as your origin and destination airports, respectively, and select a round-trip itinerary using these dates.

And there you have it! You’ve found a round-trip itinerary from New York to Dubai for just 24,000 points altogether.

Saver award upper class fares are also abundant between New York and London, so you could easily score yourself lie-flat seats across the Atlantic if you have points to spare.

Cape Town

Virgin Atlantic offers direct flights to Cape Town, South Africa. This makes it easy to fly from the U.S. to London and connect onward to Cape Town. All you need to do is find saver award availability on each leg of your journey, and you could fly for as little as 27,000 points round-trip in economy.

As always, it’s best to start with the long-haul flight from London to Cape Town (CPT) first, as saver award availability is more limited for these routes.

Once you’ve located saver award availability for the outbound leg from London, you can now look for saver award space on the return leg from Cape Town.

With these dates in mind, you can now finalize your search by confirming saver award space for the outbound journey from Boston to London.

Finally, you can confirm saver award space for the return journey from London to Boston.

Let’s now use Sunday, November 9 and Wednesday, November 16 as our departure and return dates. Head over to Virgin Atlantic’s search tool and input the dates, origin and destination airports, select round-trip fares and click “Search for Reward Fares.”

And if you’ve done your math right, you should find a round-trip fare from Boston to Cape Town for just 27,000 points round-trip.

So if you’re looking for a winter getaway with balmy temperatures, try Cape Town this year and let the Virgin Reward Seat Checker make the booking process easy.

Maldives

In addition to Dubai and Cape Town, Virgin Atlantic is the perfect airline to fly to the Maldives on the cheap.

You can connect from West and East Coast U.S. cities through London Heathrow and onward to Malé.

You’ll want to begin by finding award space for the outbound and return flights between London and the Maldives (MLE).

Here you can see that you can fly to Malé from London for just 7,500 points on the cheapest available date.

For the return leg to London, there’s more saver award space available, giving you greater flexibility when looking for flights back to Boston.

From here, you can then confirm award availability for the Boston to London part of the journey. In this case, you can find saver award fares for just 6,000 points to London.

For the return journey from London to Boston, the cheapest saver award fares are priced at the 12,000-point level.

It’s important to point out here that Virgin prices its award fares per segment and that saver award fares are still subject to dynamic price fluctuations. That means that the saver award level isn’t fixed, but instead can increase and decrease in price based on demand and the season of travel (off-peak vs. peak).

In this case, we’re able to travel from Boston to Malé for just 13,500 points one-way in economy (6,000 points from Boston to London and 7,500 points from London to Malé).

For the return flight, the segment from Malé to London costs 13,500 points while the flight from London to Boston costs 12,000 points, working out to a total of 25,500 points from Malé to Boston.

Overall, you’d pay a total of 39,000 points round-trip from Boston to Malé and back.

If you managed to find saver award fares as low as 13,500 for the Malé to Boston route on the way back, you could fly for as cheap as 27,000 points round-trip.

United States to London

As already demonstrated, there is a ton of saver award space on Virgin Atlantic-operated routes between the U.S. and London. However, what’s even better is that some of this space includes premium economy and business class awards, making Virgin perfect for transatlantic flights in lie-flat style.

For example, you can fly from New York to London for as low as 10,500 points in premium economy or 38,000 points in upper class, each way.

From Orlando (MCO), you could fly to London for just 19,500 points in premium economy each way or 24,000 points in upper class each way.

For those based in Las Vegas (LAS), you can fly to London for as low as 16,500 points in premium economy and 41,000 points in upper class, each way.

Likewise, Virgin offers nonstop flights from the West Coast with premium economy fares from San Francisco (SFO) to London going for as low as 27,500 points and upper class fares going for 67,500 points each way.

These are just a few examples of the incredible rates you can find on transatlantic flights between the U.S. and the UK using the Virgin Reward Seat Checker.

Other Airline Reward Seat Checker Tools

While Virgin offers arguably the best Reward Seat Checker tool in terms of its intuitive design, ease of use and level of detail, it’s not the only airline to do so.

The United Airlines MileagePlus search tool allows you to search for award fares by the month when you select the “flexible dates” function. You can conveniently filter the search results by the class of service and, unlike with Virgin’s Reward Checker tool, you also have access to partner-operated award fares.

Saver award fares are highlighted in green, making it easy to find the cheapest fares. United’s search tool is also one of the best when it comes to finding Star Alliance award space, so it can also come in handy even if you’re planning to book through a different airline.

The American Airlines AAdvantage search tool also offers the ability to search for award availability by the month. You can filter your search by the class of service as well as search for partner award space.

The Delta SkyMiles award search tool also offers the option to search for award space by the month, with the ability to filter by class of service and search for partner-operated award flights. Saver award space is highlighted in green, making for a user-friendly experience and more efficient searches.

Similarly, the Alaska Airlines MileagePlan award search tool also comes in handy for searching for Oneworld alliance award availability. You can search for awards by the month, filter by the class of service and search for award space with partner airlines.

Two standout benefits of these alternative award search tools compared to Virgin’s Reward Seat Checker are the ability to search for partner award space and to book flights directly from your award search page, instead of having to search for dates in a separate window. However, Virgin’s Reward Seat Checker wins in terms of its easy-to-use display for all fare types.

Other airline rewards programs also offer calendar award search functionality. For instance, Air France-KLM Flying Blue offers the ability to search by the month, but it takes some insider knowledge to know how to find saver award fares through its portal, which you can learn here.

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Transfer Partners

As if an abundance of saver award fares in all fare classes plus a Reward Seat Checker tool wasn’t enough, Virgin Atlantic is also a transfer partner of most major credit card programs.

That includes American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou Rewards, Capital One Miles and Bilt Points. You can transfer your points from these respective programs to your Virgin Atlantic Flying Club account at a 1:1 ratio. Keep in mind that Capital One Miles transfer to Virgin Red, which you can then transfer to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club by linking your Virgin Red and Flying Club accounts (which is simple and quick).

What’s more is that Virgin often runs transfer bonuses, some being as high as 40%, when transferring your credit card points to its program. That makes it an even more lucrative option, effectively reducing the price of its saver award fares further.

Final Thoughts

While Virgin Atlantic may not have the largest footprint when it comes to its routes, it boasts highly lucrative saver award rates for its flights. And with the help of a handy tool like the Virgin Reward Seat Checker, it’s never been easier to find and secure these low rates, whether it’s flying in economy to the Maldives for 13,500 points or flying to London for 24,000 points in business class.

Create a Virgin Atlantic Flying Club account today and see where your points can take you.