RIP: Virgin Atlantic Kills Off Last Delta One Sweet Spot Redemption

The internet collectively poured one out last summer when Virgin finally axed one of its best sweet spots: The days of booking Delta One business class to Europe for just 50,000 points and a few bucks each way are over. 

Virgin began tacking on nasty surcharges and fees of $1,000-plus on these Delta business class redemptions … unless you were flying from Europe back to the states, that is. In that case, you could book for as low as just 47,500 points and about $200 to $250 or so in fees. It was tough to find the award space to actually book a Delta One business class seat home from Europe at those reasonable rates, but this sweet spot quietly – and, in some ways, inexplicably – escaped unscathed from Virgin’s axe for nearly a year.

Until now. As Frequent Miler just spotted, Virgin Atlantic recently slapped even these Europe-to-U.S. Delta One awards with a nearly identical, $1,000-each-way surcharge. 

So while you could previously book a flight home from Dublin (DUB) to Atlanta (ATL) in Delta One for under 50,000 points and around $200 total…

Those same awards will now cost you that same 47,500-point rate … but over $1,000 in surcharges, taxes and fees. Ouch.

Unless you’re content forking over 400,000 SkyMiles or more, that leaves Air France/KLM Flying Blue as the best workaround to book these Delta transatlantic business class awards. You can also drastically reduce the total surcharges by booking a roundtrip that begins and ends in Europe, but that won’t make much sense to the vast majority of folks reading this. 

For years, we told travelers to look to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club – and its incredibly easy-to-earn points, thanks to credit card transfers – as an escape from Delta’s sky-high SkyMiles rates. Virtually any time Delta was charging an arm and a leg, you could book those exact same flights for a fraction of the mileage by turning Virgin instead. 

But in just the last few years, Virgin has largely blown that script up by: 

That leaves super-short flights within the states and economy (or premium economy) redemptions over to Europe and back as some of the only Delta redemptions that haven’t been torched. And at this rate, it’s likely only a matter of time before they meet the same fate. 

Pointsflation is out of control and shows no signs of stopping. And it’s hard not to see a pattern here: U.S. airlines are pulling the strings. 

Between Avianca’s series of recent LifeMiles devaluations, Air Canada’s recent transition to dynamic award pricing (read as: flights now cost you more miles) when booking United and other partners, and now this, it’s clear that the major U.S. carriers are increasingly pressuring their foreign airline partners to rework their award charts and stamp out these workarounds. 

Delta has that power: It owns a 49% stake in Virgin Atlantic, after all. And at this point, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that Delta dropped fuel surcharges on SkyMiles award redemptions from Europe to the U.S. just a few weeks ago.

Bottom Line

After escaping unscathed for nearly a year, the last great way to book Delta One for less by using Virgin Atlantic points instead has officially met its demise. 

The airline recently slapped Delta One business class awards from the U.S. back to the states with more than $1,000 in surcharges, matching a move the airline made last summer for U.S.-to-Europe redemptions. 

Pour one out … again.