I would love some advice for Qantas v Velocity programmes?
I have a lot of Qantas points - 800K (using credit card), however no status credits as my husband uses Velosity for work flights. He doesn’t have many points (as we used some) but has gold status which means we can use the lounge and as such, he only wants to fly Virgin…
I’ve wanted to convert the points over to Virgin, however you “seem” to get better value through Qantas when using reward points.
Any thoughts on this? Is it worth converting?
Thank you
Hello and welcome @nrhodes !
The short answer is … it’s complicated. It depends on what you want to get out of your points.
I’d say that Qantas is better if you want to use your points primarily for domestic and international short-haul flights (eg. to New Zealand). Qantas is a much bigger airline than Virgin and so they have more flights, at more times, to more destinations. There’s generally pretty good award availability for short-haul flights, even in business class. However, using Qantas points for long-haul flights overseas (eg. to Europe, North America etc) is a huge challenge, especially if you want to fly in premium cabins. There’s just way, way more demand than supply. I use Qantas as my primary FF programme for flights within Australia and to NZ.
I use Velocity as my primary (Australian) FF programme for long-haul overseas flights, though. There tends to be greater availability and there’s also the added flexibility of being able to convert Velocity points to Krisflyer (Singapore Airlines’ FF programme). And domestic availability, while still not quite as good as Qantas, is still generally OK-to-good.
So I’d lean towards Qantas if you were primarily wanting short-haul and/or Economy class flights. For long-haul and/or Business class or above, though, I’d lean towards Velocity.
It is, if you get into it, more complicated than that. But in a nutshell, I’d look at what your aims are for a FF programme, and then go from there. Feel free to ask more questions, though!
Oh, I just read your post again. You CANNOT CONVERT Qantas points to Velocity points. Once you have Qantas points, you’re stuck with them.
Thank you very much for replying. I appreciate it.
Regarding the converting points, I was sure that I had seen an email offering the conversion, Maybe I just wished it!
One question, when you pay for groceries etc, do you have a c/c that is connected to Velocity? Is that how you get your points for the long-haul o/s flights?
Thanks again.
Hi again.
I’m afraid you just wished the email saying that you can convert Qantas points to Virgin points. They are rivals, not partners.
I have an American Express card that earns Membership Rewards points that I can convert to Velocity (though I usually don’t!). I also sign up for Velocity-points earning credit cards once or twice per year. But I also get a lot of points each year by converting FlyBuys points. FlyBuys can potentially earn you a lot of Velocity points!