Should You Pay With Points for Purchases On Board Virgin Flights?

Virgin Australia now gives Velocity members the option to pay for on-board food & drink purchases using frequent flyer points. But just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.

How “Pay with Points” works

With the new “Pay with Points” option, you can link your Visa credit or debit card to your Velocity Frequent Flyer account in the Velocity App. You should see a pop-up with a “Link my card” button when you log in on the latest version of the Velocity App.

This only works with Visa cards, so you won’t be able to link a Mastercard or American Express card.

If use your linked Visa card to make an onboard purchase on a Virgin Australia domestic or short-haul international flight, you’ll receive a push notification after landing. You can then tap on the notification or go to the Velocity app to elect to pay for your purchase with points. You’ll need to do this within 24 hours of making the purchase.

If you choose to pay with Velocity Points for your on-board purchase, the points will be immediately deducted from your account and you’ll get a refund to your Visa card within 2-10 business days for the purchase amount.

The Velocity Frequent Flyer website has more details and FAQs about how this works.

Is this a good way to spend Velocity Points?

When using Velocity Points for on-board purchases, you’d be getting 0.5 cents of value for each point.

For example, if you bought a Balter XPA beer costing $12, that would be equivalent to 2,400 Velocity Points. Or, if you bought a meal with a ham & cheese toastie, snack and wine for $25, this would cost 5,000 Velocity Points.

That’s not particularly great value, considering Virgin has reward flights available starting from just 5,900 points + taxes & charges.

In fact, according to our analysis, this is the second-worst value way to spend Velocity Points after retail gift cards.

Buy-on-board food and drinks are high-margin products that Virgin Australia itself sells. So, I do think that Virgin could have offered a much better value proposition here!

It’s a bit of a double-whammy when you’re paying $13 for a small bottle of mediocre wine, then getting a poor conversion rate as well when covering the cost to points.

Heck, you can upgrade Virgin Australia domestic flights from just 10,000 Velocity Points. When flying Business Class, you get lounge access, a full meal and drinks on board, as well as a more comfortable seat. That’s worth more than four glasses of wine (which you could buy on board for 10,400 points)… and you could easily drink at least four glasses of wine in the lounge and on board, if you wanted to.

Velocity plans to introduce more Pay with Points partners

For now, Pay with Points is exclusively available for in-flight purchases on Virgin Australia operated flights. But Velocity Frequent Flyer says it plans to roll out this concept with more partners in the coming months.

I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who will value having more ways to use their points. But if the value proposition is poor, savvy frequent flyers might be wondering what the point is.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to more than 100 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. His interests include aviation, economics & 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.