Virgin Australia appears to be granting further status extensions to some Velocity Silver, Gold and Platinum members who didn’t benefit from the previous 12-month status extension announced earlier this year. But Virgin hasn’t gone as far as Qantas in offering an easy opportunity for all members to extend their status for a second year by booking one flight.
In March 2020, Virgin Australia announced it would automatically renew the status of all Velocity members when they reached their next review date. Almost every other airline in the world, including Qantas, offered a similar 12-month status extension around the same time.
But this offer wasn’t very useful to Velocity members who had already earned enough status credits during their current membership year to renew anyway. For example, a Velocity member with a review date in April 2020 could have already earned enough status credits to qualify by March 2020. Their status would have already renewed in April 2020 without the automatic extension, giving a new expiry date of April 2021.
Meanwhile, it has been very difficult for many Velocity members in similar situations to earn more status credits during this year – particularly those living in Melbourne.
Recognising this, Velocity Frequent Flyer is granting further 12-month status extensions to members in this kind of situation who did not get any benefit from the previous extension announced in March.
Using the example above, Velocity may in this instance grant an automatic status extension until April 2022. The Velocity member would then need to earn the required status credits between April 2021 and April 2022 to renew their status until April 2023.
There has been no official announcement from Velocity, and these are being processed only on a case-by-case basis. But if you think you would qualify to receive a 12-month status extension, and didn’t already benefit from the extension announced in March, you can call or email the Velocity Membership Contact Centre to request this. Some members have reported that the whole process took just five minutes over the phone.
Velocity Frequent Flyer didn’t directly respond to our question about the provision of further status extensions for Velocity members. But numerous Australian Frequent Flyer members have been successful in requesting this from Velocity. It appears Velocity has had many of these requests, as they already have an established process in place to deal with them.
Overall, this is good news for eligible Velocity members. But Virgin has not publicly committed to a second-year status extension for all frequent flyers like Air New Zealand has done (and Qantas has almost done).
Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: VA status extensions
