Last month Virgin America offered an 80% bonus on purchased miles for 8 hours only.

There’s a little bit more time, this time (up through December 12), to take advantage of an ‘up to 70% bonus’ for mileage purchases.

You have to log into your account to see the offer.

Virgin American points normally cost 5.2 cents apiece. This offer, maxed out at the top bonus tier, lets you buy them at ~ 3 cents (last month’s short-term offer was 2.9 cents).

That’s not a good deal for Virgin America flights, where points are worth about 2.2 cents in airfare.

For partner awards, which have award charts rather than pricing awards based on ticket cost, this can make some sense for a subset of folks who will have a specific use right away.

For instance, 30,000 miles is enough for a one-way San Francisco – London award in Upper Class on Virgin Atlantic, but that purchase will need to be paired with $600 in taxes and fees.

Still, less than $1500 all-in for a one-way Virgin Atlantic business class flight isn’t bad as far as those things go.

And it can also be useful for short haul Singapore Airlines awards, although note that Virgin America has access to limited Singapore partner inventory and not Singapore’s generous offerings for its own members.

Point purchases are processed by points.com, so to answer a common question about such transactions they do not post as travel or airfare to the credit card used for the purchase (and thus won’t earn applicable category bonuses).

(HT: Frequent Flyer Bonuses)

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