How to fly from Europe to Miami and later Sydney with Velocity points?

Frequent Flyer Programs
1

I have over 700,000 velocity points and have a family of 5. What is the best way to utilise these points and get to the following destinations or as close as possible.

Leaving Sydney Jan 2020 returning Feb 2020

  1. Hope to start at one of the destination and then fly out from the other another - Barcelona or Paris or Frankfurt or Rome or London
  2. The onto Miami
  3. Sydney

Thank you in advance

DC

3

Hi DC,

From what I can see, it may be a good avenue to use Velocity pts to redeem Delta flights. You could go EU-JFK-MIA. Then potentially, MIA-LAX-SYD. The good thing with Delta flights is, you could redeem them via the VirginAustralia website. Have a play at the individual sectors if you could not find availability. You may also struggle to find 5 seats on the same flight. You might consider paying points for some passengers and some with cash. Or you could consider splitting into travel parties of 2 + 3 pax.

Try and aim for “reward” seats and not anytime seats as the latter generally costs a lot more.

Good luck.

4

The main partner you’ll take advantage of is Delta which you can redeem your Velocity points on. I’d suggest departing Barcelona or Rome as the other cities have one of the highest taxes and fees in the whole continent as outlined in this pointhacks article.

If departing from Barcelona, you could take advantage of Delta’s service to JFK or Atlanta and connect to Miami. From Rome, you have more options. You could leverage Alitalia as an often unkown partner which offers direct service from Rome to Miami or again use Delta via Atlanta or New York. Note the different aircraft types on these routes though. Delta usually uses their 767 on these routes which have poor business class products but if you encounter their a330 aircraft, it will have a much better reverse herringbone product. Economy wise, Delta aircrafts have newer cabins in general.

Miami to Sydney can be covered by Delta and Virgin Australia themselves. You will have to fly to Los Angeles on Delta and then connect on either airline’s services to Sydney. Given the lack of business awards on these routes, you may end up having to transit through Brisbane or Melbourne.

A family of 5 is tough to book in Business so manage your expectations. I suggest using Delta’s own website to search for availability and look for space with the ‘Lowest Price’ tag on it. From there, you can use Virgin’s own website to confirm. Often though, they can’t search many oddball city combinations. It’s good to call up to check and confirm the space is available and book over the phone. They should waive the booking fee as well.

1 Like
5

Thanks to those that have repsonded I will see what I can do.

Regards

DC