Virgin Australia to Partner with Qatar Airways

Virgin Australia has found an unlikely new partner in Qatar Airways. This is exciting news for Australian frequent flyers, who could soon benefit from some unique new opportunities.

While an exact date is yet to be announced, Virgin Australia has confirmed it will commence a strategic partnership with Qatar Airways later this year. This will allow Velocity Frequent Flyer members to earn points and status credits, redeem points and receive reciprocal status benefits on Qatar Airways, a Oneworld airline which was voted the “world’s best airline” at last year’s Skytrax awards.

Velocity members will soon be able to redeem points for flights in Economy, Business and First Class across Qatar Airways’ extensive international network. Additional benefits for Velocity Gold and Platinum members when travelling with Qatar Airways could include:

• Lounge access
• Additional baggage allowance
• Priority check-in
• Priority boarding, and
• Priority baggage tags

Similar benefits will be available to Qatar Airways Privilege Club members when travelling with Virgin Australia. Passengers of both airlines will also be able to seamlessly connect between each others’ flights on a single ticket.

Qatar Airways currently flies from Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to Doha, with onward connections to many other destinations. Qatar also serves the Adelaide-Auckland market.

Virgin Australia says that its new partnership with Qatar Airways will give its customers access to 57 new international destinations not currently served by existing partners such as Etihad Airways, Singapore Airlines or Virgin Atlantic. These will include places such as Almaty, Nairobi, Tbilisi, Helsinki, Oslo, Addis Ababa and Mykonos.

Virgin Australia’s partner airlines

Virgin Australia currently partners with 11 international airlines:

Note that United Airlines will become a Velocity partner from 24 May 2022, while Delta (not shown above) will cease being a Velocity partner next month.

Of Virgin’s existing partner airlines, however, only five operate regular flights to Australia at the moment. Of those five airlines, Velocity members only get access to reciprocal status benefits on three airlines – Etihad Airways, Singapore Airlines and Delta (soon to be replaced by United).

Etihad Airways has been a long-standing Virgin Australia partner and previously offered considerable connectivity between Australia and Europe. But Etihad has reduced its network reach significantly in recent years, becoming more of a boutique airline serving only a handful of major destinations including only two Australian cities in Sydney and Melbourne. (Etihad no longer flies to Perth or Brisbane.)

Meanwhile, Qantas already partners with the two other (now much larger) airlines that make up the “ME3”, or the big 3 Middle Eastern airlines. This has offered Qantas customers a lot more international connectivity.

Qatar Airways’ new partnership with Virgin Australia will level the playing field a bit, and is a significant win for Velocity Frequent Flyer members.

Qatar Airways will soon partner with both Qantas and Virgin Australia

The elephant now in the room is the fact that Qatar Airways already partners with Qantas, Virgin Australia’s main competitor, through its membership in the Oneworld alliance. There is no indication that Qatar Airways would leave Oneworld as a result of this announcement (nor that Velocity will end its partnership with Etihad Airways).

Although Qantas and Qatar Airways are both part of the Oneworld alliance, the two airlines have historically not really got along. Over recent years, Qatar Airways has also been blocking Qantas Frequent Flyer members from accessing many Business Class reward seats to and from Australia.

The new Virgin-Qatar partnership could create some interesting opportunities for people with Qatar Airways Privilege Club status who could soon enjoy benefits when flying with both Virgin Australia and Qantas, as well as the rest of the Oneworld alliance.

This situation has existed before, when Airberlin was both a member of the Oneworld alliance and a Virgin Australia partner. But Airberlin’s former Topbonus program made it very difficult to earn status from flights within Australia, and the airline went out of business in 2017.

With Qatar Airways also recently switching the currency of its frequent flyer program to Avios, this could make the Qatar Airways Privilege Club significantly more attractive to Australians going forward.

We don’t yet know exactly how many Velocity points or status credits Virgin Australia’s frequent flyers will be able to earn for Qatar Airways flights. But as it currently stands, Velocity awards status credits for flights with all partner airlines at the following rates:

At these rates, a Velocity Frequent Flyer member could expect to earn 560 status credits for a round-trip Business Class trip from Sydney to London via Doha with Qatar Airways.

That’s more than the 500 status credits required to earn Virgin Australia Gold status. By booking these flights as “VA” codeshares, you could also earn the 4 required “VA” sectors required each year to earn or maintain Velocity status.

By comparison, Qantas Frequent Flyer actively penalises its members for flying with partner airlines like Qatar Airways with reduced earning rates. Qantas would award just 280 status credits for a return trip from Sydney to London in Qatar Airways Business. That’s not even enough to earn Silver status with Qantas Frequent Flyer!

Qantas also doesn’t award any points or status credits on most of Qatar Airways’ cheaper Economy fares.

We’ll no doubt learn more about how this partnership will work over the coming months. Whatever happens, there are exciting times ahead.

Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Virgin Australia and Qatar Announce Strategic Partnership

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 60 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil, New Zealand & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can contact Matt at [email protected]