Triangle Trip

Everyone is used to their accruing airline miles, and then redeeming those airline miles to get their free airplane ticket.  This is good for most of us who try to find the cheapest ticket possible because we still get the same number of miles independent of ticket price.

However, Virgin America‘s (VX) loyalty program (“Elevate”) is a good reward model in favor of themselves, and not the consumer.  That combined with no status wonders how they will attract the business flyers.

You earn 5 Virgin America Elevate points for every pre-tax US dollar spent on a ticket.  I had flight of total of $49.60, pre-tax was $36.10.  I earned 36 * 5 = 180 Elevate points.

On Virgin America’s website, you can switch back and forth between dollars and Virgin America points when booking a ticket.  The rough conversion is 46.51 points per US dollar.

Examples: A $38 flight is 1768 points, and a $101 flight is 4698 points.

So if you are stuck with a short mileage flight but expensive ticket, go with Virgin America. Virgin America offers you more bang for the buck! You will also enjoy the nice new planes – before they go out of business per The Captain’s previous post.

Virgin America is flying from point to point as opposed to using a hub and spoke model like the larger US carriers. The point to point flights work well on regional hops but don’t think they work as well on coast to coast flights. The coast to coast flights cost too much to operate when you have planes that are 1/4 full.

Virgin America flies from NYC and Boston to Los Angeles and San Francisco. I have been going coast to coast on Delta an United for the past four months, and the coast to coast flights are rarely full. Although I haven’t been on a Virgin America flight but I can’t image they are packed or even 50% full.

United probably has the most loyal business travele customers and they can’t fill up the United P.S. flights which has less seats than Delta and other airlines due to the larger business class cabin. If you have Virgin America miles (I am not even sure how it works), I highly recommend you use them now before they go under like the Virgin retail stores. I don’t see how Richard Branson and his hedge fund partners are making money here.

I recently got a new business credit card and started using it to purchase flights.  I swiftly bought a Virgin America ticket with the new credit card, no problems.  Next, I had to fill up gas, and like always I use a credit card to pay and in the more sketchy neighborhoods they always ask for zip code, so I prepared by getting the zip code, and actually the entire billing address.

Later that week, I purchased a United flight, and it asked me to input the billing address, so I entered my mailing address to see it if worked (since I had the card sent there), but no, it didn’t, I had to use the business mailing address and it worked.

I realized, Virgin America didn’t check the address at all.  I’ve recently purchased another VX ticket, and I don’t have the business address stored anywhere. For the extra security, I would be gladly take the burden of entering the correct address to the credit card.

For you readers out there, what about the other airlines?