Virgin Australia’s “Pilot Gold” is a short-term (3-month) Velocity Gold membership offering a taste of Gold status. Anyone on “Pilot Gold”, will have access to a range of Velocity Gold benefits such as priority services and lounge access for three months.
During the three months trial, the member will have a set of requirements to complete to extend the period to a full year. Velocity has updated these requirements to be in line with the recent changes to the way status is retained.
Changes
The changes are outlined in the latest Terms and Conditions:
Depending on your Review Date, you can maintain Gold Status for a further 12 months if you complete one of the following before your Pilot Gold or Discover Gold Trial ends:
- If your Review Date is before 1 October 2025, you must achieve a Status Credits balance of at least 80 Status Credits, and fly at least one Eligible Sector or,
- If your Review Date is on or after 1 October 2025, you must achieve a Status Credits balance of at least 80 Status Credits and all 80 of these Status Credits must be earned on eligible Virgin Australia marketed and or operated flights, flown by you.
As the trial period is three months, anyone signing up now will have a review data after 1 October. On the other hand, anyone part way through a Pilot Gold challenge will stay on the existing requirements.
How to get Pilot Gold
At present, the path to Pilot Gold is through the Velocity Business Flyer program. If a business spends at least $2,000 on flights within their first three months of Business Flyer membership, they qualify for this trial. They will allow them to nominate two travellers for Pilot Gold.
Those individuals will then have the Pilot Gold for three months. They will then need to meet the requirements to keep gold status. If they do not meet the requirements, they will drop down to silver.
That said, from time to time, Velocity do offer other paths to Pilot Gold. For example, the sometimes run a Status Match promotion where they offer elite members of other programs the trial.
Final Words
I would suggest that the new requirements will make it a bit tougher to keep Gold. Essentially, you will need to spend at least $960 on your own travel in those three months. You won’t be able to count any status credits obtained through Family pooling, or flying on other airlines.
That said, the change lines up with the other changes made to status qualification.
