I have about 400,000 Velocity points and am looking to go to Europe probably around November 2024 for 3 people. Ideally would like to use the points to upgrade to Business. Not really sure of the best way to go about it.
Hello and welcome @Bellamy
To my knowledge, Velocity points can’t be used to upgrade to Business class on flights to Europe on any airline.
Your only hope is to convert your points to KrisFlyer (Singapore Airlines) points and to use them to upgrade on a Singapore Airlines flight. The relevant tables can be found below.
You will need 417,000 Velocity points to book 3 Business reward seats outright (139,000 per person). If you want to travel to Europe in Business class, that would be my strategy – forget about upgrading.
Hope this helps!
https://www.singaporeair.com/saar5/pdf/ppsclub_krisflyer/charts/SQ_OneWayUpgradeCharts.pdf
Ok. Thank you. I assumed because you can use Velocity points with Virgin partners to buy seats, including business class, to Europe that you could also use them to upgrade from economy to business. But if that’s not the case I’ll have to rethink my strategy.
You can redeem business class seats outright with Velocity points on Virgin Australia and its partners (incl. Singapore Airlines, Etihad, Qatar Airways). That is a much better/sure-fire way to secure business class seat.
Upgrades require you to pay for your economy flights (usually the more expensive flexible ones) and you are not guaranteed to get a business class seat.
As @sixtyeight has mentioned, there isn’t even the option of upgrading using Velocity points on partner airlines. The only option of transferring Velocity points to another airlines program is to Krisflyer miles, which does allow you to upgrade a Singapore Airlines economy seat. However, it is not great use of Velocity points as you lose via the Velocity-Krisflyer transfer, and it is not a guaranteed upgrade (subject to availability) and you have to pay for an expensive economy flight.
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