Five Awards to Book with KrisFlyer Miles (Instead of Velocity Points)

Virgin Australia Velocity points are a reasonably versatile currency. You can redeem Velocity points to fly with Virgin Australia and 12 other partner airlines. But one of the advantages of Velocity Frequent Flyer is the ability to transfer points to the Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer program. This opens the door to award flights on even more partner airlines.

In some cases, booking award flights through the Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer program also works out cheaper than booking via Velocity – even after accounting for the penalty when transferring points!

It is currently possible to transfer Velocity points to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer at a rate of 1.35:1. This conversion rate applies to transfers in both directions. Unfortunately, the KrisFlyer transfer rate will increase to 1.55:1 from 1 January 2019.

But there is still time to transfer your points at the current rate! And it could absolutely make sense to do so, depending on how you wish to use the points. There are a range of award flight redemptions that are currently better value if you book with KrisFlyer miles, rather than Velocity points. Here are five of them…

1. Longer Virgin Australia domestic flights within the eastern states

You can redeem Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles for Virgin Australia flights. This doesn’t always work out to be better value than booking with Velocity points, but there are some specific cases where it is. Singapore Airlines charges a fixed price of 11,000 miles in Economy, or 21,000 miles in Business, for any Virgin Australia flight within NSW, ACT, VIC, TAS, QLD and SA. (Basically, this covers every Australian state/territory except for WA and NT.)

For routes over 1,200km in length, transferring your Velocity points and booking a KrisFlyer award works out to be cheaper than redeeming directly through Velocity Frequent Flyer. Routes like Melbourne-Cairns fall into this category. Itineraries with multiple stops are also allowed, such as Hobart-Sydney-Townsville or Adelaide-Brisbane-Hamilton Island. Plus, if you book a round-trip award, you’re even entitled to a free stopover in one direction.

Here’s a comparison of the costs on one route…

Sample route: Melbourne-Cairns in Business

Velocity Frequent Flyer: 35,500 points + $31.04 taxes
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer: 21,000 miles (equivalent to 28,350 Velocity points) + $31.04 taxes

2. Australia to New Zealand and the Pacific Islands

When redeeming KrisFlyer miles with a Star Alliance airline – in this case, Air New Zealand – it costs 12,500 miles for any Economy class flight within Australia, New Zealand or the Pacific Islands. This means that longer flights like Perth-Auckland, or even Perth-Auckland-Tahiti, are one low price with the KrisFlyer program. Although Air New Zealand releases almost zero Business reward availability, they do have some options in Economy.

Sample route: Perth-Auckland in Economy

Velocity Frequent Flyer: 22,300 points + $131.07 taxes (flying Virgin Australia via Melbourne)
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer: 12,500 miles (equivalent to 16,875 Velocity points) + $117.19 taxes (direct flight with Air New Zealand)

3. Australia to Morocco

Award flights from Australia or New Zealand to Middle East or North Africa are a “sweet spot” in the Singapore Airlines award chart. It costs just 78,000 KrisFlyer miles to fly with Star Alliance airlines from Australia to destinations like Casablanca and Marrakech. By comparison, the same flights would cost 139,000 Velocity points!

Sample route: Sydney-Casablanca in Business

Velocity Frequent Flyer: 139,000 points + approx. $672 taxes (flying Etihad Airways via Abu Dhabi)
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer: 78,000 miles (equivalent to 105,300 Velocity points) + $207.13 taxes (flying Singapore Airlines and Turkish Airlines via Singapore & Istanbul)

4. Europe to the Middle East

Routes from Europe to anywhere in the Middle East, such as London-Dubai, are also exceptionally well-priced with Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer. It costs just 25,000 miles for Business Class – around half of an equivalent Velocity reward ticket.

Sample route: Dublin-Abu Dhabi in Business

Velocity Frequent Flyer: 65,000 points + $303.20 taxes (direct flight with Etihad Airways)
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer: 25,000 miles (equivalent to 33,750 Velocity points) + $257 taxes (flying Turkish Airlines via Istanbul)

5. Round-the-world flights

Singapore Airlines also offers round-the-world award tickets! With this redemption, you can fly around the globe on Star Alliance airlines with up to 7 stopovers.

There is no equivalent redemption with Velocity Frequent Flyer. If you want to fly around the world using Velocity points, you’ll have to pay the sum of each individual segment.

The KrisFlyer Star Alliance round-the-world award costs:

Economy – 180,000 KrisFlyer miles (equivalent to 243,000 Velocity points)
Business – 240,000 KrisFlyer miles (equivalent to 324,000 Velocity points)
First – 360,000 KrisFlyer miles (equivalent to 486,000 Velocity points)

Would you like help using your frequent flyer points?

Australian Frequent Flyer offers a personalised service that’s designed to take the hard work out of redeeming your frequent flyer points!

Our Frequent Flyer Concierge team can help you to find the perfect flights using your points. Just let them know how many points you have and where you would like to go, and they’ll prepare an itinerary for you.

Having trouble finding and booking reward seats?

Our Frequent Flyer Concierge is here to help!

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Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.