Virgin Australia has just announced that they have partnered with Flybuys which will enable shoppers to earn both points and status credits.

This is quite surprising considering Etihad and Flybuys have a partnership already which will remain active at this time.

The transfer rate for status credits is $100 spent = 1 status credit, and for points: 2.3 Flybuys points = 1 Velocity point.

Flybuys and Virgin Australia

All information from Flybuys and the Virgin Australia website.

Use your flybuys card when you shop at Coles, Coles Online, Liquorland or First Choice Liquor and earn 1 Status Credit for every $100 spent, up to 10 per month.^

Velocity Status Credits help you to reach or maintain a higher level of Velocity membership giving you access to the best of Virgin Australia’s premium products and services.*

The higher your membership level, the greater benefits you will receive such as Lounge access, Priority Check-in and additional baggage allowance.

You will be able to link one member of your flybuys household to a nominated Velocity membership and this linked person will be the recipient of the Status Credits.

To put that into perspective for the sake of earning status,

Silver will cost $10,000

Gold will cost $50,000

And lastly platinum will cost a massive $100,000! 

The maximum status credits per month is 10 which will equal 120 in a year. If you’re wanting to get status you better start flying because this won’t get you even halfway to silver if you haven’t flown.

Key points:

• You can transfer a minimum of 2,000 flybuys points (equivalent to 870 Velocity Frequent Flyer Points) and a maximum of 138,000 flybuys points (equivalent to 60,030 Velocity Points) per household, per calendar year.

• You can only have one Velocity Frequent Flyer membership linked to your flybuys household at any one time. You can change the link at any time to another frequent flyer within the flybuys household

• Status credits are awarded per calendar month to the Velocity Frequent Flyer account linked to the flybuys household at the end of the calendar month. Please allow up to 2 weeks after the end of each calendar month for your Velocity Frequent Flyer Status Credits to be credited to your account.

• For a limited time only, transfer your flybuys points to Velocity and receive 15% bonus Velocity Points+. Offer ends 30 November 2016.

• This relationship in Australia is between Velocity Frequent Flyer Pty Ltd and flybuys a registered trademark of Loyalty Pacific Pty Ltd. It does not apply to the Fly Buys program in New Zealand.

To link or join the programs the links below will take you to the page:

Flybuys

Virgin Australia

Both are free and easy to join.

Bottom Line

This partnership is a little worse than I was thinking. The transfer rate for the points is nowhere near as valuable as their Etihad promotion $1 = 1 Guest mile, and the status credit earn is very poor. This may be useful to some shoppers, but personally, I’d stick to Qantas and Woolworths rewards.