Velocity Frequent Flyer members can earn status credits on all Virgin Australia reward seat bookings for the next two months, with Velocity bringing back the promotion that it ran from October 2021 until March 2022.
This new limited-time promotion covers Virgin Australia reward seats booked using Velocity points, for travel from 1 June until 31 July 2022.
Both Economy and Business Class reward seats will earn status credits, and it doesn’t matter when the ticket is booked. Even Velocity Reward Seat tickets already booked before this offer was announced will earn status credits, as long as the flight takes place during the two-month promo period.
You won’t earn quite as many status credits as you would when paying for a revenue ticket on Virgin Australia. Economy Reward Seat bookings will earn status credits at the normal Economy Lite rate, while Business Reward Seat bookings will “only” earn at the regular Economy Choice rate. Still, it’s better than nothing!
Here’s the number of Velocity status credits you could earn during this promotion for domestic flights within Australia, as per the Velocity Frequent Flyer website:
And here are the status credit earn rates for Virgin Australia reward bookings on international flights during this promotion:
Virgin Australia is currently flying to only one international destination – Nadi, Fiji. Virgin will also resume flights to Denpasar (Bali) in Indonesia from 15 June 2022. Note that Velocity reward flights operated by Virgin Australia’s partner airlines won’t earn status credits.
Interestingly, the distance-based zones used to award status credits with this offer are different to the zones that would normally apply when earning status credits on domestic airfares. Normally, Zone 2 on the Velocity status credit earning table covers flights between 751-1,500 miles and Zone 3 covers flights above 1,500 miles.
This means that while routes like Canberra-Adelaide (604 miles in distance) would normally be considered part of “Zone 1” for the purpose of earning status credits on a revenue airfare, this would earn at the “Zone 2” level if you booked a Reward ticket during this promotion.
You can book as many domestic Virgin Australia reward flights as you like during the offer period and earn status credits for all of them!
You can read the full offer terms & conditions on the Velocity Frequent Flyer website.
Velocity Frequent Flyer previously offered status credits on domestic reward bookings from 1 October 2021 until 31 March 2022, which was the first time Velocity has done so. Normally, no points or status credits can be earned on flights booked using Velocity points.
But Virgin wasn’t the first airline to offer this – Qantas and some other airlines have recently started giving away status credits on award flights as well. In the case of Qantas, status credits are available to Points Club members when booking a Classic Flight Reward on a “QF” flight number.
Virgin Australia also continues to boost the amount of status credits earned on all revenue airfares by 45-100% until 30 June 2022.
Maximising status credits on Virgin Australia reward flights
The principles for maximising Velocity status credits on Virgin Australia reward flights during this promotion are similar to the strategies Qantas Points Club members can use to maximise their status credits on Qantas domestic reward flights.
Firstly, it makes sense to book Business Class reward seats over Economy during this promotion. That’s because Business Reward seats cost only twice as many Velocity points as Economy seats (and the same amount of taxes & carrier charges), but earn 3x as many status credits.
Another trick to maximising this offer is to book reward flight itineraries with multiple flight sectors. That’s because one-way reward seat bookings are priced based on the sum of all the flights on the itinerary, but status credits are earned for every individual flight sector.
For example, if you booked a single Brisbane-Mackay flight in Business Class using Velocity points, you would spend 15,500 Velocity points and earn 15 status credits. If you booked a multi-stop itinerary like Launceston-Melbourne-Canberra in Business (with a total distance flown of less than 600 miles), you would also spend 15,500 Velocity points but earn 30 status credits.
Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Earn SC on Reward Travel (now until July) & Bonus SC Revenue until June 2022
