I originally intended to buy a flight to Hamburg for my son, but it never got sorted out and he decided he would like to come on a trip with me instead. Looking around I coould get a good deal on business class flights and there was one available BHX-CXG-AMS so 2 flights in one. Usually if this was just about the trip to Amsterdam we’d fly direct and enjoy the city. This was really about giving him an experience in business class with a flagship airline. He’s usually flown with LCC like Ryanair. I have a pretty decent number of Virgin atlantic points – I bought some in a half-price sale and have more through conversion 1:2 with Tesco Clubcard points and through my Virgin Atlantic branded credit card. If you decide to sign up please use my referral code

https://www.virginmoney.com/cards/referafriend

Referral code: e0XDsn8oyioFm4wGAcdkrg==

You get a welcome bonus and we both get a referral bonus if you spend a certain amount in 90 days. The exact amounts change so I wont quote them here just follow the link.
So here is what I booked.

The flights cost a total of 16000 Virgin Points and £134.54 so cost wise its £67.27 each for 2 business flights each plus 8000 points.

Looking 6 weeks ahead the cheapest fare is £433 GBP per person so the Virgin points could be valued at £365.73 or 0.0465/point. Its not entirely this simple as you miss out on 2947 Flying Blue miles and 30 XP. The XP can be purchased at 1XP per €10 by donating SAF (so add €300 (£260.53)) This would reduce the value of the 8000 Virgin Points to £105.20 or £0.0132/point . This looks even better though when you consider to cost to book through AF or KLM with Flying Blue miles.

So how should you book this flight
25000 FB Miles and €77.13.(£66.98) compared to
8000 Virgin Points and £67.27. – For me theres no contest FB Miles are harder to earn for me and cost roughly 0.01p/mile which is the same cost to buy Virgin points WHEN ON SALE.
Virgin Points have some great redemption value , probably 2-3x that of FB Miles.


In November I obviously didn’t know what the weather would be like and assumed it would be “OK” at least , maybe wet and cold, it’s mid-winter after all. but this is the weather forecast. The day before our trip was snowy in Paris and Amsterdam. A LOT of flights were delayed or cancelld.
The exact flights we were due to take the following day looked like this
BHX-CDG (AF1165) was 1 hour 17 minutes late which would make the connection unlikely to work.
CDG-AMS (AF1840) was cancelled.

There are some other later scheduled flights to Amsterdam
With Air France AF1440 leaving at 18:10 delayed estimated 18:25
With Kenya Airways KQ164 is leaving at 16:40 but its estimated 20:40
With KLM KL 1412 leaving at 20:45 just shows as “scheduled”
So it looks like if the flight from BHX is delayed there are later possible flights to AMS

I fly Tomorrow so look for an update here (and probably a YouTube Video). I also keep Instagram updated on travel days so follow along there to keep updated up to the minute.
https://www.instagram.com/travelling_gold/