BA Amex CC or Virgin Amex CC?

Laxe

Hey guys, I'm looking into get a cc which rewards me in terms of airmiles and have narrowed it down to BA or Virgin.

Basically this will be used for normal, daily expenses but I'm not exactly sure which one to get and whether the cc with the annual fee is worth it.

I'll list the details here:

BA Amex CC:

• 1 BA mile per £1 spent
• Collect 1,000 BA miles upon activation
• Spend £20,000 and a free BA companion ticket is given when redeeming BA miles

BA Amex Premium CC:

• 1.5 BA miles per £1 spent
• 3 BA miles per virtual £1 spent direct with BA and BA holidays
• Collect 6,000 BA miles upon activation
• Spend £10,000 and get a free BA companion ticket when redeeming BA miles
• £150 annual fee

Virgin Atlantic CC:

• 1 Flying Club mile per £1 spent
• 2 Flying Club miles per £1 spent direct with Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Holidays
• 3,000 Flying Club miles when used for the first time
• Spend £15,000 in a year and get a free companion ticket
• Spend £10,000 in a year and get a free premium economy upgrade

Virgin Atlantic Black CC:

• 2 Flying Club miles per £1 spent
• 4 Flying Club miles per £1 spent direct with Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Holidays
• 6,000 Flying Club miles when used for the first time
• £115 annual fee

I'm not really fussed about interest rates or balance transfers so I didn't include them. I've also never really used Virgin Atlantic but it does seem that Virgin are offering a better deal.

In terms of mile redemption, an economy ticket to Tokyo with BA will set you back 80,000 miles but with Virgin it's only 60,000 (though they say there's a sale right now and I'm not sure of what the normal conversion is).

Do any of you have one of these cards or both? Do you think the annual fee CC's are worth the extra miles?

nortoang

Hi, me and a couple of friends have a black Virgin Amex card and are quite happy with it -we tend to fly Virgin quite a lot so collect airmiles both from that and the card. You can get up to 2 upgrades to premium if you book an economy reward seat (if premium reward seats available, which is not always). We've just come back from Dubai which cost us about £500 for 2 permium flights all in. Virgin do quite often have airmiles sales where you spend less airmiles for flights, sometimes half teh amount which is good - not sure about BA.
One thing we were disappointed about was the companion flight as the 1st flight has to be booked at the flexible fare the then free one you have to pay taxes on top - mostly this seems to work out the same as booking them normally. The BA companion flight is better as you get the same as you pay in airmiles - if you save enough for business you get the companion flight at same level which is pretty good.

_Andy_

I have the Black VS Amex and it's well worth it. (IMO)

Megalomaniac

Virgin air miles are brilliant compared to BA (but they have more routes etc...). For 60,000 miles on Virgin you get a free return flight to USA (bar taxes I assume) which will take around 6-8 flights. On BA it's 100,000 miles or something like that, and you will only get a few thousand or so for each return flight to America.

Basically, it will take a lot less spending/flying to get to your free/discounted flight on Virgin compared to the eternity on BA!