Virgin Atlantic launched its new web site over the weekend and has enabled the functionality to secure a discount from a revenue ticket by using your Flying Club miles. Logging in to the new Virgin site required me to set up two security questions and gave me a new Flying Club number.

Unlike BA, Virgin allows a granular discount, the minimum unit of redemption is 1,000 with the smallest discount being £18 for 3,000 miles. You can cash in your whole balance if desired:

When booking you need to take two steps.

1. Select Pay with miles plus money when booking your trip – see below.
2. Once the list of cabins and flights comes up look for those that offer this type of redemption – notably NOT Delta flights.

It’s pretty simple and a good way to get rid of miles.

Of course the web site has the increase redemption levels loaded which mean that I no longer have enough for an Upper Class roundtrip to the US West Coast. However, as American Express seems to be back as a transfer partner, I will move a few across later in the month. Note, however, that Amex has my old Flying Club number against my account, and the technology to support adding a new one was unavailable on the Membership Rewards site when I tried.

So, if you want to cash up and get out of Virgin, as I do. Now is your chance.