Velocity reinstates Singapore Airlines redemptions

[Mr H]

Spent the last couple of hours playing around with VA's points redemption. I am mostly a Qantas FF but I got a ANZ rewards black card because the monthly fee was $0 and travel vouchers are useless during a pandemic so I now have ~200,000 points. I will say that they could learn a thing or 2 from QF's multi city booker where it gives you the option to be flexible with dates and select the class you want.

Yeah it looks like they are being quite stingy about it. I can see from their own website that they have their own Krisflyer point seats on the dates I want.

SQ have always kept most of their premium redemption seats in house. If you have an ANZ rewards card, just redeem for KrisFlyer miles and book through SQ.

 

[Zanzaid]

Point hacks is reporting that business reward seats will be able to be booked from later today.

Guide to Virgin Australia's international partners

Great news: Velocity members will once again be able to redeem their points for international flight redemptions. Here's what we know so far.

www.pointhacks.com.au

 

[Gianni S]

Have just tried and already working. Melbourne to Asia at least, tested Singapore and coughet

Normally I transfer to Krisflyer and book however business class seems considerably cheaper by not transferring.
Any idea how seat selection works when booking SIA via velocity redemption on Virign website. Are we able to call up to get seat assignment at any stage?

 

[antycbr]

Have just tried and already working. Melbourne to Asia at least, tested Singapore and coughet

Normally I transfer to Krisflyer and book however business class seems considerably cheaper by not transferring.
Any idea how seat selection works when booking SIA via velocity redemption on Virign website. Are we able to call up to get seat assignment at any stage?

I've been able to find the SQ PNR (important, not the VA PNR) and use SQ's Manage My Booking, once the ticket has been issued (i.e. not same day, as the ticket takes a bit of time to populate over to SQ). The same trick also works for AC bookings.

 

[seritonin]

Managed to snag a couple of J seats MEL to BKK via SIN on the 27th of December!

 

[knick007]

Think the site is dead! Trying to book MEL to LHR in May or June. It is probably wishful thinking to snag an award seat but one can try!

 

[get me outta here]

SQ site is spluttering with all the sudden attention.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Point hacks is reporting that business reward seats will be able to be booked from later today.

Guide to Virgin Australia's international partners

Great news: Velocity members will once again be able to redeem their points for international flight redemptions. Here's what we know so far.

www.pointhacks.com.au

Interesting.



I don't have enough points to continue a dummy booking to see what the total booked cost would be.

For someone that has, with the 157,300 Point option do any taxes and charges get added to it? Also for the 139,000 plus $108.64 option?

$108.84 saving 18,300 points which in itself is attractive.

Saver Cost booked via Krisflyer is:


The $108.84 is the total booked cost one way.


With Velocity there are from time to time very good transfer rates to move points in. Higher than say 20% (may be higher depending what the final booked cost is for the 139/157K) could make it attractive to move points to Velocity rather than Krisflyer (Where transfer bonuses are quite rare).

 

[Scr77]

Interesting.

View attachment 273880

I don't have enough points to continue a dummy booking to see what the total booked cost would be.

For someone that has, with the 157,300 Point option do any taxes and charges get added to it? Also for the 139,000 plus $108.64 option?

$108.84 saving 18,300 points which in itself is attractive.

Saver Cost booked via Krisflyer is:

View attachment 273881
The $108.84 is the total booked cost one way.


With Velocity there are from time to time very good transfer rates to move points in. Higher than say 20% (may be higher depending what the final booked cost is for the 139/157K) could make it attractive to move points to Velocity rather than Krisflyer (Where transfer bonuses are quite rare).

The higher 157k option won’t have any taxes. You are effectively using points to pay the taxes at a poor value.

 

[jase05]

Interesting.

View attachment 273880

I don't have enough points to continue a dummy booking to see what the total booked cost would be.

For someone that has, with the 157,300 Point option do any taxes and charges get added to it? Also for the 139,000 plus $108.64 option?

$108.84 saving 18,300 points which in itself is attractive.

Saver Cost booked via Krisflyer is:

View attachment 273881
The $108.84 is the total booked cost one way.


With Velocity there are from time to time very good transfer rates to move points in. Higher than say 20% (may be higher depending what the final booked cost is for the 139/157K) could make it attractive to move points to Velocity rather than Krisflyer (Where transfer bonuses are quite rare).

Those totals are it, no extra charges.
You will get hit a small CC fee for the second option

 

[Mr H]

The higher 157k option won’t have any taxes. You are effectively using points to pay the taxes at a poor value.

Yes - it is never, ever good value to pay the taxes with points on any redemption on any airline .

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Those totals are it, no extra charges.
You will get hit a small CC fee for the second option

Thank you for confirming.

I will keep a lookout for higher transfer bonuses then to Velocity..

I have moved points to Velocity for 40% bunus in the past. Sometimes in the past when the transfer rate to Krisflyer from Velocity was better and so one ended up with a higher number of Krisflyer points than direct, and sometimes for international partner awards booked via Velocity. Especially before some partners added fuel fines.

Hopefully these redemption point rates remain. No need in the immediate future for myself though as I already have a healthy Krisflyer balance that needs to be used up.

 

[Maisy33]

I’ve never booked with points for virgin before. When I go to multi-city add Perth then Singapore it comes up with no matching results for Singapore?. what am I missing?

 

[GCflyer]

I’ve never booked with points for virgin before. When I go to multi-city add Perth then Singapore it comes up with no matching results for Singapore?. what am I missing?

I was about to ask the exact same question - I'm trying to book a multi-city reward flight to SE Asia and it seems impossible to book overseas destinations??

Ideally i'd like a layover in Singapore (under 24 hours) rather than flying the same day - both flights I'm wanting to combine have reward availability.

Any ideas? Would calling be an option?

I also feel like the old pre-covid booking website was much easier when searching for Business availability as with this one you need to click on each day to see what is available - from memory it wasn't like this?

 

[Mattg]

Any ideas? Would calling be an option?

I think you need to call Velocity for any multi-city award bookings/to add a stopover.

 

[SCM]

I have both QFF and Velocity, it would seem to me that business redemptions with SG offer far far greater value than Qantas/Emirates for the same destinations to Europe.

For example, I'm looking towards the end of the year but before the holidays so not really peak, Sydney-Munich return:

Velocity: 278k points + 302.74 taxes
QFF: 345k points + 1,374 taxes ??? for Qatar (I looked further out due to all seats sold out)
For Emirates it's even more expensive in taxes and similar points.

How can Qantas be so utterly poorly competitive? And it's not like their redemptions to NA are any better, the only saving grace is JAL to Japan which are pretty decent.

I'm probably going to switch my primary card to Velocity when this one's year is up, just seems like QFF is not worthwhile anymore, and I bet Virgin will only compete harder as they rebuild their international network.

 

[Mattg]

How can Qantas be so utterly poorly competitive?

I know this was a rhetorical question, but 1 in 3 credit card transactions in Australia earns Qantas points. That's how.

 

[Mr H]

How can Qantas be so utterly poorly competitive? And it's not like their redemptions to NA are any better, the only saving grace is JAL to Japan which are pretty decent.

It really depends on what you want to do with your points. Historically, VA had a smaller range of routes to choose from, less ability (if any?) to staple together flights on different airlines, and very poor availability of redemption flights. Were there also surcharges for EY flights or did I imagine that? Right now, availability is freakishly high as many people have not got back into travel, but when things normalise it will be easier to make direct comparisons. I used to collect VA to transfer to KrisFlyer which had a greater range of options.

 

[antycbr]

I have both QFF and Velocity, it would seem to me that business redemptions with SG offer far far greater value than Qantas/Emirates for the same destinations to Europe.

For example, I'm looking towards the end of the year but before the holidays so not really peak, Sydney-Munich return:

Velocity: 278k points + 302.74 taxes
QFF: 345k points + 1,374 taxes ??? for Qatar (I looked further out due to all seats sold out)
For Emirates it's even more expensive in taxes and similar points.

How can Qantas be so utterly poorly competitive? And it's not like their redemptions to NA are any better, the only saving grace is JAL to Japan which are pretty decent.

I'm probably going to switch my primary card to Velocity when this one's year is up, just seems like QFF is not worthwhile anymore, and I bet Virgin will only compete harder as they rebuild their international network.

Consider some of the card programs such as the Amex MR program which allows you to transfer direct to SQ amongst others. SQ points open up star alliance awards on more than a dozen airlines.

 

[Kimster]

Snagged a few tickets to India (BLR) last night. One pair during the peak Christmas and another a few months earlier - all in J. Tremendous value as velocity is 78,000 points one way in comparison to 84,000 with Krisflyer. Taxes are similar. For folks who have stuck with Velocity after all the shenanigans - and for people who have used 20% or more bonus points to accumulate this, these bookings are a steal.

This kind of value reminds me of one way J redemptions that we could have had with United on Thai and Sin metal a few years back to BKK, SIN etc, which I think was around 40K united miles with little or no taxes.