As you would have seen the past few days, pretty much all of the posts being put out in someway have a relation to the COVID-19 virus be it airline news or travel updates from various countries. Virgin Australia & Qantas have both been hit incredibly hard by the virus and both will continue to feel it for quite some time. As the number of scheduled flights continue to diminish, many frequent flyers have been sceptical in regard to their frequent flyer status and how that will work going forward.

Late last night, Virgin announced that because of the reduction in flights and fewer people travelling overall, they will be gifting status credits and the amount that will be given depends on the tier you hold. To me, that was perfectly acceptable as some assistance from the airline but today they’ve added another very helpful addition. Combined with the gifted credits, Virgin Australia will give frequent flyers a status extension of 12 months.

Virgin Australia Will Give Frequent Flyers A Status Extension

12-month status extension for all Velocity members holding Silver or above

While I wasn’t at all expecting Virgin to introduce two benefits for flyers, It’s very very happily welcomed and I know there are a lot of people that are extremely grateful for this. With the extension, this basically means you’ll hold the same status you currently hold for a complete 12 months and you also don’t have to fly on the sectors usually required.

If you happened to miss my post regarding the gifting of status credits, you can check that out here. If you don’t want to go and read that, I’ve listed all of the amounts for each tier below for reference:

• Platinum members

As a top tier Platinum member with Virgin, you’ll be given a total of 210 status credits.  Each month until the end of June, you’ll be given 70 status credits. Just a reminder, if you want to attain Platinum, you’ll need to earn 1000 status credits while re-attaining the tier requires 800 status credits as well as eight flights onboard Virgin Australia.

• Gold members

As a gold member with Virgi, you’ll be given a total of 105 status credits. Each month until the end of June, members will receive 35 status credits. As a reminder, flyers that want to reach gold status will require you to earn 500 status while re-attaining will require 400 credits and four sectors on Virgin Australia.

• Silver members

As a silver member with the airline, you’ll be given a total of 70 status credits. Each month for three months, you’ll be given 20 status credits. To earn Silver status on Virgin, you’ll need to accrue 250 status credits and to keep the status; you’ll need to earn 200 credits as well as flying onboard two Virgin Australia sectors.

Overall

Despite what’s going on in the world, carriers still need to operate certain parts of the airline as though nothing has happened and this is the case for loyalty. This is one area that will be left alone now as the frequent flyer program is a MASSIVE income source so the airlines are trying to keep as many as they possibly can.