Ever struggled to work out how best to redeem your frequent flyer points? Perhaps you can gain some insights from AFF member travelislife. They’ve written a detailed case study, explaining how they booked a Business class trip to Europe with Velocity points. This member redeemed reward flights from Melbourne to London, returning from Copenhagen to Melbourne with a stopover in Phuket.
I thought I would just give my experience from booking a recent trip to Europe using Velocity points to help out others in future. Especially with all the questions people have with regard to booking direct with VA points or transferring points to SQ.
The first step was to determine the best way to book the trip to Europe with Velocity points. Velocity points can be transferred to the Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer program. But it was decided that the best value option in this case was to book Singapore Airlines flights using Virgin Australia Velocity points.
With that analysis completed, it was then time to book the flights. Some of the Singapore Airlines reward seats were available directly through the Virgin Australia website. But the website did not display all available options – particularly on flights connecting via Singapore. The solution was to phone the Velocity Membership Contact Centre.
At first the agent did a search for MEL-LHR and couldn’t see the flights. I then said to her to check each one individually. The agent could see both the legs I wanted as available, but not when searched as a through ticket. She thought that was strange. Anyway she went and had a play in the system and managed to construct the ticket with the 2 legs I wanted (stopover less than 24 hours so still a through ticket). Great!
There was one added complication with this booking. travelislife also needed tickets for their newborn infant. After the birth of their child, this member was able to add them onto the booking at no extra charge, simply by calling Velocity. The fact that lap infants under two years old can travel at no cost is a great benefit of the Velocity Frequent Flyer program!
A few extra Velocity points were needed to make the final booking. It is possible to buy additional frequent flyer points from some airlines, including Virgin Australia. But a much cheaper method of acquiring frequent flyer points is via a credit card sign-up bonus.
Now needing 100,000 points fast my only real option was a credit card bonus. Conveniently Virgin Money had a great deal going, 120,000 bonus points over 3 months
If you’re looking at booking a similar trip, it’s worth considering that Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer program does allow a free stopover on round-trip bookings. This would bring the price down if stopping over in Asia en-route to Europe. But in this case, Velocity Frequent Flyer was still a better option as KrisFlyer charges 10% of the cash fare for infant tickets.
Read this detailed member case study on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Experience Booking Europe Trip with Velocity Points
