How To Redeem Points For Virgin Australia’s New Hong Kong Services

by Zac George
a bed with pillows and a purse on it

A few weeks ago Virgin Australia announced services to and from Melbourne and Hong Kong. The service will be operated by their A330-200 aircraft and it features’s their brilliant Business Class product.

If you’ve not seen what the product is like on the A330, I’ve reviewed it here.

a seat in a plane

Virgin Australia New Business Class

The flight has been on sale for a few weeks now but there’s a bit of confusion when it comes to booking award seats on the route. When searching for award seats the website will only show full priced awards which are very steeply priced.

a screenshot of a flight schedule

If you keep looking online you’ll keep getting annoyed as you won’t see any saver rewards, only full fare redemptions.

a screenshot of a flight schedule

So how do I find a Saver redemption?

At the moment, the Virgin Australia website won’t show seats available but there is a way to find space. For the time being, you’ll need to use a program like Expertflyer.

You’ll need to look for the fare codes X and Z. X is the code for an Economy award and Z is the code for a Business reward.

a screenshot of a flight schedule

Once you find space and are ready to book, you’ll need to call Velocity. If you’re calling Velocity from Australia the phone number is 13 18 75, if calling from New Zealand the number is 0800 230 875 and if you’re calling from any other country, the phone number is +61 2 8667 5924.

From what I’ve found, the availability on the route is fantastic! Almost every day I could find at least 2 seats in Business and quite a few in Economy.

How many points do the flights cost?

If you’re wanting to redeem Velocity points for the flights, it’ll cost you 27,800 points for a one-way Economy Class fare or 59,500 points for a one-way Business Class fare. As for taxes, they are $79.95 AUD.

You can also use Singapore Airlines Krisflyer miles for the flights. It’ll cost you 26,000 points for a one-way Economy Class fare or 54,000 points for a one-way Business Class fare.

 

 

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4 comments

Penny Carter April 11, 2017 - 10:53 am

You state that “or 59,500 points for a one-way Business Class fare. ”

IME it’s always been ~90k ++

Where are you seeing 59k on the VA website??

Zac George April 11, 2017 - 12:26 pm

Penny – On the Velocity website, there’s a section for the points tables. As the flight is 4614 miles it falls into level 5. Here is the link if you’re interested. https://www.velocityfrequentflyer.com/content/Redeem/Airlines/PointsTables/

jody nichols April 11, 2017 - 4:12 pm

Good post Zac, I was wondering if these saver rewards existed and apparently they do.

Simon November 7, 2017 - 9:27 pm

Hi Zac. Thanks for the very useful information.
Do you have any idea when Velocity would open availability from Melbourne to Hong Kong for Sept/Oct 2018?
Searching their website just now they seem to have some availability in August but not yet for Sept.

Comments are closed.