How Virgin Subtly Keeps International Flyers Loyal to Velocity

Update: Since this article was written, United MileagePlus had added the ability for Premier qualifying credit to be earned for Virgin Australia flights.

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Some Australian-based frequent flyers were disappointed to discover, when the recent Virgin Australia-United partnership launched, that Virgin Australia flights will not earn premier qualifying credit with the United MileagePlus program. This means that, although United MileagePlus members can earn award miles for Virgin Australia flights, they don’t count towards United Airlines status.

This is despite the fact that Virgin Australia Velocity members can earn both points and status credits – which count towards Virgin Australia status – on United Airlines flights.

The ability to earn United premier qualifying credit on Virgin Australia flights would have been an attractive proposition for some Australian frequent flyers. Virgin and United both offer reciprocal status benefits on each others’ flights, so Velocity status does come with benefits anyway when flying United (and vice versa). But United status additionally comes with a very compelling benefit that Velocity status does not: Star Alliance Silver or Gold perks.

And that’s precisely why Virgin Australia probably doesn’t want to let United MileagePlus members earn status qualifying credits on its flights. If this was possible, a small but highly valuable group of Virgin Australia flyers might just switch their main loyalty program from Velocity to MileagePlus.

Virgin Australia is not in an alliance

Velocity Frequent Flyer members can access certain benefits when travelling with some of Virgin Australia’s international partner airlines:

Unfortunately, Virgin’s virtual network of international partner airlines is patchy. For example, there are large parts of the globe such as South America that are not covered by a single partner airline.

Because Virgin’s partner airline agreements are individually negotiated, each partnership also has completely different terms. It gets particularly messy when it comes to reciprocal status tier benefits, which are different on each partner airline.

Velocity Gold or Platinum status is great if you mainly fly domestically on Virgin Australia. But Virgin only has a couple of its own international destinations at the moment – Nadi and Bali – and the benefits of Velocity status can be really hit-and-miss when flying on partner airlines.

For example, when flying with Singapore Airlines or Virgin Atlantic, Velocity Gold and Platinum members can get lounge access at some airports. But this benefit only applies at ports where Singapore Airlines or Virgin Atlantic operate their own lounges. So if you’re a Velocity member flying Singapore Airlines out of Kuala Lumpur, Auckland, Frankfurt, Paris, Barcelona or many other airports where Singapore Airlines doesn’t have its own lounge, you won’t get any lounge access.

And then there are Virgin Australia partner airlines like Air Canada and Hawaiian Airlines that offer no status benefits whatsoever to Velocity Gold or Platinum members. None at all.

If Virgin Australia were to join Star Alliance, this would solve many of these issues for Velocity Frequent Flyer members as Star Alliance Silver and Gold benefits are guaranteed alliance-wide. But there are no signs of Virgin Australia joining an alliance any time soon.

If you wanted to remain loyal to Virgin Australia for domestic flying while also enjoying the benefits of a global alliance, a workaround in the meantime would be to credit your Virgin Australia flights to the loyalty program of an overseas partner airline that is part of an alliance. But this not straightforward.

Most Velocity partners don’t award status credits on Virgin flights

Air Canada, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways and United Airlines are all Virgin Australia partner airlines that also happen to be part of Star Alliance. Of these airlines, Air Canada is the only one that will let you earn elite qualifying credit for Virgin Australia flights – and only on domestic flights.

Theoretically, this could make Air Canada’s Aeroplan program an attractive proposition for Australians who fly Virgin Australia domestically and also travel overseas a lot. However, as you might recall, Air Canada Aeroplan status does not come with any status tier benefits on Virgin Australia.

Here’s a summary of what you can earn when crediting Virgin Australia flights to each of the frequent flyer programs of Virgin’s partner airlines:

Loyalty program	What you can earn when crediting Virgin Australia flights
Air Canada Aeroplan	Status Qualifying Miles (SQM) are only earned on domestic Virgin Australia flights (but Aeroplan members receive no status tier benefits on Virgin Australia anyway)
Capital Airlines	No loyalty program
Etihad Guest	Tier Miles and Tier Segments are earned on Virgin Australia flights
Hainan Airlines & Tianjin Airlines Fortune Wings Club	Status Qualifying Points & Segments are earned on Virgin Australia flights
HawaiianMiles	Award miles earned on partner airlines including Virgin Australia do not count towards earning Pualani Platinum or Gold status (and there are no status tier benefits on Virgin Australia anyway)
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer	Elite Miles are only earned on SQ codeshare flights operated by Virgin Australia (not available when booking a domestic itinerary)
South African Airways Voyager	Only miles earned on Star Alliance flights count towards tier status
United MileagePlus	As of August 2022, Premier qualifying credit is now earned on Virgin Australia flights
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club	Tier Points can be earned on Virgin Australia, but Economy flights under 2,000 miles don’t earn anything

So, you can at least earn elite qualifying credit with Air Canada Aeroplan, Etihad Guest, Fortune Wings Club and (in limited circumstances) Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. Of these, Etihad Guest is probably the most useful program. But Etihad is not in a global alliance either, and for most Velocity members there would be no obvious benefit to using Etihad Guest over Velocity Frequent Flyer.

A clever move?

Without being party to any of Virgin’s internal communications, it’s impossible to know whether Virgin has intentionally negotiated its bilateral agreements with other airlines to disincentivise Australians from crediting Virgin flights to other loyalty programs. Either way, some would say it’s clever on the part of Velocity Frequent Flyer as it’s a subtle way to keep Australians loyal to the Velocity program by stealth.

On the other hand, Virgin’s main competitor Qantas offers its frequent flyers the best of both worlds. Qantas Silver, Gold, Platinum and Platinum One members get benefits when travelling domestically with Qantas, as well as excellent Oneworld alliance benefits when travelling overseas.

The risk for Virgin is that many Australians who fly overseas regularly simply won’t engage with the Velocity program or fly with Virgin Australia at all.

The Qatar Airways partnership will likely be the same

Last month, Virgin Australia announced it will form a partnership with Qatar Airways later in 2022.

This could potentially create an interesting scenario for Australian frequent flyers because Qatar Airways is also a Qantas partner airline through its Oneworld alliance membership. So, holding Qatar Airways Privilege Club status could soon be quite an attractive proposition for Australian based flyers who’ll get benefits on both Qantas and Virgin Australia.

When this new partnership launches, it is likely that you’ll be able to earn Velocity points and status credits on Qatar Airways flights. But for the reasons outlined above, you can bet that Qatar Airways Privilege Club members won’t be able to earn Qpoints – which are needed to earn Qatar Privilege Club status – on Virgin Australia flights.

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum.