How to redeem Melbourne to Bangkok in business class with a combination of Qantas, Velocity and purchased points?

Flights & Airfares
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My partner and I would like to travel Business Class in October 19 for a milestone event. I have 150k points with Qantas and about the same with Virgin. Happy to buy points (Avianca? - what else can I buy?)

What are my best options??

Thanks so much!!

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Hi Christina. Congratulations on your “milestone event”!

You obviously don’t have enough points with either Qantas or Velocity for a return trip, so you’ll need to use your Qantas points to get there, and your Velocity points to return (0r vice-versa).

Qantas points: these are the two options I suggest you look at.

  • Melbourne to Bangkok direct in Jetstar business class (48,000 points per person).
  • Melbourne to Bangkok via Sydney in Qantas, or MEL-SYD in Qantas and Sydney to Bangkok in Emirates (72,000 points per person), all in business class.
The Qantas/Emirates option will give you the more comfortable ride, but if you fly Jetstar it's a direct flight and a lot cheaper. Your call, but just be aware that Jetstar business class is more like premium economy on a full-service airline. In other words you get what you pay for.

Velocity points: you don’t have quite enough so you’ll need to purchase some (via this link). Then here are your options:

  • Using Velocity points directly, you could fly via Hong Kong (85500 points) or you might get lucky and find Singapore Airlines availability on the Virgin website.
  • You could convert your Velocity points to KrisFlyer miles and hop on to the Singapore Airlines website where there is plentiful availability. You could then either book a Singapore Airlines redemption via Singapore (58,000 KrisFlyer miles) or a Star Alliance redemption and fly Thai directly from Melbourne to Bangkok for 66,000 KrisFlyer miles.
Either way you'll have to purchase some Velocity points because when you convert Velocity points to KrisFlyer Miles your points will reduce in number by 26%.

As for buying points from another airline … in your situation this would be (in my opinion) a waste of money. You might as well use the points you already have, with a small purchase from Velocity to top things up.

Oh – if you  have any FlyBuys points, now would be a good time to convert them to Velocity points.

I hope this helps!

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Wow…such a detailed and knowledgeable response.  Thank you so much!!

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