Book Virgin Australia’s Melbourne-Hong Kong flights using points

Virgin Australia Velocity members can now book non-stop flights from Melbourne to Hong Kong using their Velocity points – here’s how it’s done, whether you have enough points to snare a business class suite or a humble economy class seat.

Step 1: Searching for Virgin Australia Melbourne-Hong Kong reward flights

Begin by heading to the Velocity Frequent Flyer website, logging into your Velocity account, and then clicking ‘search and book flights’ from the main navigation menu accessible from the My Account page.

Next, key in your planned route (Melbourne to Hong Kong), whether you’ll be booking a one-way or a return trip, and your travel date(s).

Ensure that the ‘use points + pay’ option is checked at the top, and then select either ‘premium/business’ to search for business class reward flights, or leave this set to ‘economy’ to search for economy rewards.

(You can’t search for both business class and economy rewards on the one screen, so if you want to check all your options, you’ll have to come back and search again for the opposite reward type.)

On the next page, the key words to look for are ‘business reward’ for business class or ‘economy reward’ for economy class. These rewards require the fewest number of points to book – so avoid choosing an ‘any seat’ flight which can cost up to ten times as many points!

If a suitable reward is available on your travel dates, you’ll spot this below. We’ve searched for business class rewards, and can book this Melbourne-Hong Kong flight for either 72,600 Velocity points outright, or for 59,500 Velocity points plus $84.95.

However, note that the non-stop Melbourne-Hong Kong flight may not always appear at the top of the search results. For instance, when searching for an economy flight on the same date, the first result was a multi-flight journey with no ‘economy reward’ seats available…

… yet when we scrolled down the page, we spotted the non-stop Melbourne-Hong Kong flight which could be booked as an ‘economy reward’ for either 40,900 Velocity points outright or for 27,800 Velocity points plus $84.95.

Whether you’re flying up the front or down the back, just click on the appropriate reward option to get things moving.

If you were hoping to pay the lower points amount with money on the side, you can safely ignore the running tally on the right of the page – the option to use money appears later in the process:

If you can’t find a suitable reward flight (or the flight you were hoping to book shows ‘sold out’ in the left-most reward column), you could instead try searching for availability on another date by clicking one of the alternative dates at the top of the page, or clicking ‘modify search’ to go back and try again.

Step 2: Booking Virgin Australia Melbourne-Hong Kong reward flights

Once you’re happy with your flight selection, you’ll then be prompted to key in or confirm your name, Velocity and contact details, or the details of the traveller if you’re booking this flight for somebody else.

You’ll also need to either accept or decline the travel insurance being offered (at an additional fee), which will then get you to the final payment screen.

By default, the Velocity website will try to have you pay for your entire booking (including taxes and fees) using Velocity points – being the full 72,600 Velocity points in business class…

… but we always find the best value in parting with as few points as possible and using actual money to cover the spread, in which case, simply drag the slider from the far right to the far left to reduce the number of points to the minimum:

Then, finish up by entering your credit card or debit card details to pay the excess amount using money, remembering that Virgin Australia applies a 0.6% surcharge on all debit cards and a 1.3% surcharge on all credit cards, taking the total payable from $84.95 to $86.05 in this case for credit card.

The only extra step you’ll face is if you’re booking a return journey, where you’ll be prompted to search for your return leg after locking in your outbound flight, before reaching the same final payment screen.

Chris C.

Chris is a a former contributor to Executive Traveller.