- Virgin Australia will increase the cost of earning and keeping Velocity status from April 2025.
- Platinum status will now cost around AUD12,000, leading many flyers to question its value for money.
- Flyers may shift loyalty to Qantas or use partner airlines to retain benefits, making Virgin’s move a risky bet.
Virgin Australia is getting set to make a raft of changes to its popular Velocity frequent flyer programme, which will, for most people, make it harder and more expensive to get and keep status.
The changes will spell the end of people picking up platinum status for around AUD3,500 annually and just eight eligible sectors. From April 2, 2025, Virgin Australia will start handing out status that is based on airfare spend. Achieving platinum will now cost around AUD12,000 and AUD9,500 annually to retain.
Velocity Gold will cost around AUD6,000 to achieve and AUD4,700 to retain. VA wants to reward its highest-value customers. Fair enough. The question for many current Virgin Australia elites is whether VA status is worth the extra spend, and if it’s not, what are you going to do about it?
Velocity Frequent Flyer CEO Nick Rohrlach told DMARGE the airline had to look at the program as a whole and find parts that needed to be refreshed:
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“This allows us to have a sustainable business and proposition for our members well into the future, giving them a program that is fit for purpose and recognises and rewards ongoing loyalty.”
Nick Rohrlach
Velocity vs. Qantas Frequent Flyer
It’s easier to get and retain Velocity status than Qantas status, and rightly so. Velocity is a lesser programme than Qantas Frequent Flyer. Velocity status isn’t a bad deal by any means, particularly for flying on partner airlines like Qatar and Singapore. However, it lacks the depth and breadth of QFF.
On the bread-and-butter domestic routes, Qantas is finally getting its act together. The airline has made investments in its in-flight product and scaled back the cancellations and delays. It’s noticeable. Virgin Australia remains very focused on minimising costs. This is also very noticeable. Virgin Australia isn’t bad; it’s just not as good. This current state of play makes Virgin Australia’s decision to make status harder to achieve and retain kind of crazy-brave.
Unless your annual travel spend on VA is already hitting the announced dollar value thresholds, Virgin Australia loyalists have some decisions to make. You could spend more and tickets and/or fly more frequently. This is what VA wants you to do. But is Velocity status worth the new price tag? Your mileage will vary on this point.
Rohrlach says that only 50% of the required tier status qualification criteria needs to come from flying on Virgin Australia marketed flights… Despite this, it will still be far more expensive to earn and retain status:
“The remaining 50% can continue to come from family pooling, status credit earn from Velocity consumer and financial services partners or when flying on a partner airline marketed and operated flight.”
Nick Rohrlach
Declaration: I’m VA platinum. I mostly keep it by buying entry-level domestic business class fares during double status promotions — 110 points for AUD389 flights to Brisbane and so forth. I also credit Qatar and Singapore flights back to Velocity. From a fiscal point of view, I’m just the kind of passenger VA wants to bump off. On the other hand, my preference to retain status meant a large chunk of my annual domestic flying and spending on it was directed to Virgin Australia.
Alternative Options
Loyalty programmes are designed to encourage suboptimal choices on the part of the consumer, such as spending more than you need to. An economically rational person would dump airline loyalty programmes and fly the most suitable carrier based on need, cost, and/or convenience. You could supplement this with a paid airline lounge membership like Priority Pass — a far cheaper proposition than chasing status. Jetstar one day, Qantas the next, VA on Friday, Rex on Sunday. Rinse and repeat.
If you already hold QFF status, you could direct more/all of your Virgin Australia business over to Qantas. If you don’t hold QFF status, you could give Qantas a call and ask about their status match fast track programme. Typically, this involves earning a reduced number of status credits within a fixed time frame in exchange for QFF Gold (Oneworld Sapphire).
If that’s not an option, it’s 700 status credits to QFF Gold. In the meantime, you could buy yourself a Qantas Club membership to ease the accrual pain. Unlike VA, Qantas has a lot of lounges scattered all around the place although standards vary. You could also supplement a low-status existence on Virgin Australia with a paid lounge membership.
Alternatively, you could try to status match your Velocity status to another Oneworld airline and use that to receive status benefits on Qantas, although opportunities to do this are relatively scarce, and you’d need a plan in place to retain that status.
For those who do stick around and maintain or increase their spend on Virgin Australia airfares, the airline is offering a few carrots:
“From October 1 2025, Velocity will expand its Status tiers for the first time since 2011 to include Platinum Plus’ which will recognise Velocity’s frequent flyers as VIP across all touchpoints in their travel journey, including the booking, boarding and in-flight.”
Nick Rohrlach
It’s going to take a couple of years for the full implications of this frequent flyer gamble by Virgin Australia to play out. They are punting the vast majority of regular passengers who will suck it up, keep flying with them, and accept their status downgrades when they come through. They are figuring people (or not so many people) won’t back their swags and shift their business to Qantas.
Attaining and retaining status in the QFF isn’t cheap either but it has more benefits than the Velocity programme. VA’s gamble might be Qantas’s gain…
