Virgin Velocity - South America Limitation

[travelbug85]

Hi everyone, apologies if this has been covered. I'm new here and this is my first post. I'm a platinum velocity members, currently around 125k points on the account mostly through flying for work and credit card spent. The problem is: I'm originally from Brazil and I would love to somehow use my points to visit home. Unfortunately Virgin sucks when it comes to South America coverage. How can I unlock my points to use towards south america flights and should I be changing my frequent flyer program? If so, which one do I choose? I also fly to the US at least once per year.

 

[Mattg]

Welcome to AFF!

As you've discovered, South America is a massive gap in Virgin's partner network.

Are you looking to fly to Brazil in economy or business class? If it's economy, you could redeem your points for an Air New Zealand flight to Buenos Aires. You can also transfer your points to KrisFlyer and redeem for flights on other Star Alliance airlines - although Air NZ to Argentina is still by far the most direct option. The reason I say this only works for economy is because Air New Zealand never releases any award seats in business class.

In the long term I would definitely be looking at earning points with a Oneworld airline. There is pretty good award availability from Australia to South America on LATAM Airlines, including in business class.

 

[travelbug85]

Hi mate, Air NZ is no longer allowing members to collected velocity points for americas flights...

any alternative?

 

[Mattg]

Hi mate, Air NZ is no longer allowing members to collected velocity points for americas flights...

any alternative?

You could fly Delta via the United States. Otherwise, you would have to credit your Air New Zealand flight/s to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer and then transfer the points to Velocity.

 

[grubbidok]

This is a massive oversight and VA need to sort this out soon. I still don't understand why they didn't continue (or attempt to) to allow NZ earn/burn on ports where they weren't competing with other partners.

You could use DL, but that's a hell of a detour. You can technically use SA via JNB too, but that involves a convoluted PER stopover. Both are about 40+ hours and not ideal.

Even last year there were at least 4 options to get to Brazil - SQ via BCN, EY via AUH or on NZ via EZE. As well as DL and SA. SQ and EY dumped their service to GRU (their only South American service). Then they burned their bridge for no good reason with NZ.

I'm about to attempt a SYD-LAX-ATL-GIG on DL. Don't mind doing it once. In fact, as most of my Latin American jaunts are to Central America (e.g. MGA) or the top half of South America (e.g. BOG or LIM) DL is really not that much worse than any other way, but the bottom half is a different story. If this turns out to be a regular thing it once again really questions the value of the VA "virtual network". There are just way too many holes (Europe and India being other ones that are big enough that VA should really not be ignoring them).

 

[Mattg]

I asked someone from VA about their lack of partners in South America recently. I was told that there was no specific reason they don't have a partner in South America, but that they didn't really see the value as it's relatively unimportant and low-yielding market. (Their words, not mine!)

Realistically though, if they can't make a partnership with NZ work, then there aren't many other South American airlines that it would make sense from VA's point of view to partner with.

 

[mannej]

OT, but how is the transfer in PER convoluted?

T1-T1 is it not? No need for a bus transfer unlike SYD.

 

[Denali]

We flew SYD-LAX on VA metal and then LAX-ATL-SCL with delta. 36hrs inc transit by memory, it wasn't bad. (all J)