Virgin Atlantic and WestJet have just rolled out loyalty reciprocity, something that I’m excited about on the surface. However, the single thing that I was most hoping for doesn’t seem to be terribly useful in practice.
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club & WestJet Rewards partnership
Virgin Atlantic and WestJet have a partnership, and it has just been expanded, with new loyalty reciprocity. The idea is that members of both programs can earn and redeem rewards for travel on the other airline.
For those wondering about the logic of this partnership, keep in mind that Virgin Atlantic recently resumed Toronto (YYZ) flights, so the airline values having some connectivity in Canada. Furthermore, the airlines run in similar circles, and Air France-KLM and Delta are even investing in WestJet.
On the surface, there’s more upside with Virgin Atlantic Flying Club redemptions on WestJet, rather than the other way around:
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club partners with most major transferable points currencies, and there are often transfer bonuses, so the currency is easier to rack up
- For WestJet Rewards members, redemptions are limited to WestJet marketed flights on Virgin Atlantic via London Heathrow (LHR) to Cape Town (CPT), Dubai (DXB), Johannesburg (JNB), and Male (MLE)
Meanwhile Virgin Atlantic Flying Club members can redeem across WestJet’s network, in theory. Below you can find the Flying Club redemption rates on WestJet, with distance based pricing.
I’m not as excited about this partnership as I was hoping
More opportunities to earn and redeem points thanks to airline partnerships are always a good thing, if you ask me. Selfishly, when I heard about this partnership, one thing was most exciting to me — the ability to redeem Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points for travel in WestJet business class on long haul flights.
WestJet’s own loyalty program is revenue based, so there aren’t great premium redemption options. On top of that, up until now there haven’t been any good airline partners that have allowed for premium redemptions on WestJet.
So when Flying Club published its award chart for travel on WestJet, I was hopeful that maybe premium redemptions would be allowed. Sadly these tickets can’t be booked online, but instead, have to be booked via Virgin Atlantic’s (excellent) contact center. So I picked up the phone and was connected to a lovely agent.
I inquired about business class award availability from Calgary (YYC) to both Tokyo Narita (NRT) and London Heathrow (LHR) across a wide variety of dates. While economy awards were wide open, there was no business class award availability.
So that leads me to believe that maybe long haul business class redemptions are blocked, which is the potential aspect of this partnership that sounded most promising. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. Though it’s still funny to me how WestJet is one of the few airlines to have several airline partnerships (including loyalty collaborations) while seemingly fully blocking business class awards.
Bottom line
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club and WestJet Rewards have rolled out loyalty reciprocity, which is a great development, as members of both programs can earn and redeem rewards. Unfortunately there are some major catches here, including that WestJet Rewards members can only redeem on select Virgin Atlantic routes, while Virgin Atlantic Flying Club members don’t seem to get WestJet business class award availability.
What do you make of this expanded loyalty collaboration?