One of the most requested missing features of Virgin Australia’s Velocity Frequent Flyer program will soon become a reality, with a new lifetime Gold status tier launching on 1 October 2025!
To attain Virgin’s new “Forever Gold” status, you would need to earn at least 12,000 lifetime status credits, backdated to 2013. But there’s a catch: at least 75% of those status credits will need to come from Virgin Australia marketed or operated flights. (Originally Virgin said they would need to be VA marketed flights, but it today changed this to “VA marketed or operated”.)
This lifetime status tier will launch at the same time as Velocity’s new Platinum Plus status.
“For the first time since 2011, the introduction of two exclusive new tiers – Forever Gold and Platinum Plus – demonstrates our commitment to rewarding the ongoing loyalty of our most frequent flyers,” Velocity Frequent Flyer CEO Nick Rohrlach said.
This guide explains everything you need to know about Virgin Australia’s Forever Gold lifetime status…
Contents
How to earn lifetime Velocity Gold status
To attain Forever Gold, you would need to have earned at least 12,000 Velocity status credits since 1 February 2013 (or whenever you joined the Velocity program, if it was later than that).
Crucially, though, at least 9,000 of those status credits must be from Virgin Australia marketed or operated flights that you have personally flown.
This means that status credits earned via the following methods will not count towards the 9,000 status credit requirement:
- Partner airline marketed flights
- Family pooling
- Flybuys
- Eligible Velocity points-earning credit cards
- Other non-flying promotions
Conversely, we understand that the following types of status credits would count:
- Virgin Australia marketed and operated flights
- Codeshare flights with a VA flight number and operated by partner airlines
- Bonus status credits from promotions such as Double Status Credits
If you have earned enough status credits to earn Platinum or Platinum Plus status in the previous year, you’ll of course be upgraded to a higher tier. But you’ll never drop below Velocity Gold status.
Credit Cards with Virgin Australia Lounge Passes
- Card Name
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- Earn
- 1
- Signup Bonus
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120,000 bonus Velocity Points
Apply by 15th Jul 2025
- Annual Fee
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on everyday purchases
- Card Name
- American Express Velocity Platinum
- Earn
- 1.25
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60,000 bonus Velocity Points*
Apply by 12th Aug 2025
- Annual Fee
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on everyday purchases
The benefits of Virgin Australia Forever Gold status
Forever Gold membership will come with all of the same benefits of regular Velocity Gold status. These include access to Virgin Australia and partner airline lounges, priority check-in, priority boarding, additional baggage allowance and more. The difference is that you won’t ever lose your status… as long as Virgin Australia is still around.
The complimentary hotel and car hire program status matches remain once per lifetime, though.
According to the Velocity terms & conditions, “Forever Gold Status will terminate when Velocity membership is terminated by the member of Velocity, including when Velocity becomes aware the member has passed away”. Velocity of course also retains the right to change the benefits of Gold status at any time.
How this compares to lifetime Qantas Gold status
By comparison, you would need to earn 14,000 lifetime status credits with Qantas Frequent Flyer to get lifetime Qantas Gold status. However, Qantas does not require that a certain amount of those status credits must be earned on Qantas flights.
Arguably, with Velocity’s requirement for 75% of the status credits needed for Forever Gold to be from Virgin Australia flights, Forever Gold may be just as hard for some people to earn as lifetime Qantas Gold.
At the same time, Qantas Gold status offers arguably more and better benefits due to Qantas’ Oneworld alliance membership. Virgin Australia is not part of an alliance, and while Velocity status does grant benefits on partner airlines, these are somewhat inconsistent.
It’s worth noting that Qantas offers lifetime Silver and Platinum status, as well as its lifetime Gold tier. So far, Velocity is just offering lifetime Gold.
Australian Frequent Flyer asked Velocity CEO Nick Rohrlach if he felt the requirement to earn at least 9,000 of the status credits required for Forever Gold from Virgin flights was competitive against Qantas.
Rohrlach told us that the bulk of members earn their status credits from Virgin Australia marketed flights. He added that Velocity also didn’t want to make it too easy to earn lifetime status perks, and that Forever Gold was designed to reward the loyal customers who’ve invested the most into Virgin Australia.
How close are you to Forever Gold?
Velocity Frequent Flyer recently added a handy widget to its website that helps you to track your progress towards Forever Gold status.
You can find this by logging into your account on the Velocity Frequent Flyer website and clicking on “Unlock Forever Gold” under the “Status” menu:
You can also check your status progress in the Velocity app.
As you can see, I’m still only around a third of the way to Forever Gold status. (Although I’ve flown quite a lot on Virgin Australia over the years, Reward Seats obviously don’t earn any status credits – and Virgin doesn’t have an equivalent of Qantas’ Points Club 😉 )
According to Velocity’s calculator, I would need to earn another 5,849 status credits on Virgin Australia flights and 7,938 total status credits to reach Forever Gold. Based on Velocity’s new status credit earn rate of 1 per $12 spent on Virgin flights, this means I would need to spend more than $70,000 to earn 5,849 status credits on VA marketed and operated flights. (That would drop to $35,000 if I booked during a double status credits promotion.)
Interestingly, when I contacted the Velocity Membership Contact Centre in October 2024 to ask about my lifetime status credit tally, they gave me a totally different figure.
Join the discussion on the AFF forum
What do you make of Velocity’s new Forever Gold tier? And are you closer than me to achieving it?
You can share your thoughts on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum!
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