Late last year Velocity announced some sweeping changes to the Velocity program. Velocity has now tweaked some of the changes, and it is slightly good news for those traveling on international partners.
Tweaks to the October Changes
The tweaks generally affect two areas of the changes
- Rules around the number of Status Credits required on VA flights for achieving and maintaining status
- A minor lift to the number of status credits earned on specific international partner flights
Status Eligibility Changes
Velocity is changing the requirements to earn and maintain Status earning from 1 October 2025. While the overall number of status credits is not changing, there is an eligibility requirement that will change.
In particular, the current requirement to earn those status credits on a certain number of Virgin Australia flights will be removed. In its place will be a requirement to earn at least 50% of the Status Credits on Virgin Australia flights.
When first announced, the 50% requirement could only be met on flights marketed and operated by Virgin Australia. Basically, that meant, you would need to be on a Virgin Australia aircraft, flying on a VA flight number.
Velocity have now relaxed the rule somewhat. Under the change, you will be able to meet the 50% requirement on flights marketed and/or operated by Virgin Australia. That means that any of the following combinations will count as eligible for that 50% requirement:
- Virgin Australia flights booked with a VA flight number. An example of the would be flight VA800 Sydney-Melbourne operated by Virgin Australia.
- Codeshare flights on a partner airline flights booked with a VA flight number. As an example, VA8507 Brisbane to San Francisco operated by United Airlines would be eligible.
- Virgin Australia-operated flights booked through a partner airline. An example of this would be SQ 6435 Canberra to Brisbane, operated by Virgin Australia..
This change will be particularly helpful if you fly on a partner operated long-haul flight. For example, VA codeshare flights on United, Qatar or Singapore Airlines will now count toward the 50% requirement.
Status Earning Changes
Velocity will also tweak the Status Credit earn rates on a small number of international routes flown by partner airlines. This change is for VA marketed flights on the following routes:
- Singapore Airlines operated flights between Australia and Singapore, and
- United Airlines operated flights between Australia and the United States.
That said, they are not huge changes. In many cases, you will be awarded an extra 5 Status Credits over the previous announcement. It will still represent a decrease from the current tables, just not quite as big a decrease.
Final Words
Given that Virgin lean heavily on partners for many international flights, these improvement will help some members. This will be the case for those that do a significant amount of travel on the partner airlines.
