u/Large_Connection_484

so i have 210,000 virgin atlantic flying club miles that i have been sitting on for about 14 months. doing nothing with them. life got busy.

last week i got the devaluation alert email. VS is restructuring partner redemption rates in june. the window to book ANA, JAL, and delta first/business at current rates closes in about 3 weeks.

i'm now in full panic mode going through every routing i can think of to burn these at the current sweet spots before they're gone. found a JFK-NRT ANA first class option that i'm seriously considering booking just to use them correctly, even though i wasn't planning a japan trip.

so my question: what's the most creative or last-minute rescue you've pulled off on a points balance about to get nuked? either by a devaluation, expiry, or program shutdown.

and for those who've been in the VS situation before, what's the move? ANA first, delta one, or just a solid business class routing i'm not thinking of?

i have 380,000 amex membership rewards points. have had them for about 18 months.

this whole time, amex travel has been showing me 'great value - book through the portal and get up to 1.5 cpp.' little green checkmarks. bold numbers. it looked legit.

this week someone in a facebook group mentioned avianca lifemiles. i looked it up. currently running a 15% transfer bonus. business class to europe via star alliance: 50,000-63,000 miles depending on routing. same seats i was about to buy through the portal for 253,000 points.

let me do that math again. 253,000 portal points vs 55,000 transferred miles + the 15% bonus. for the same seat.

that's not a rounding error. that's nearly 200,000 points.

i'm not even mad at amex. the portal is just built to look like the easy, obvious choice. and it is easy. it's just extraordinarily expensive.

anyway. i now have a lifemiles account. and a strong opinion about portals.