Virgin Australia, Hong Kong Airlines launch codeshare partnership

Some brief news for our Community: Virgin Australia and Hong Kong Airlines will commence codesharing from July 5 2017.

Virgin Australia will codeshare on HK Airlines' Gold Coast-Hong Kong (via Cairns) flights, while HK Airlines will codeshare to 11 Virgin Australia destinations, including on VA's Melbourne-Hong Kong flights.

Velocity Frequent Flyer members will be able to earn points and status credits when travelling with Hong Kong Airlines, while members of HK Airlines' Fortune Wings Club will be able to earn both frequent flyer points and base points (used for status qualification) when travelling with Virgin Australia.

Further, more typical frequent flyer arrangements such as reciprocal lounge access, priority check-in/boarding and additional checked baggage will be introduced at a later date (so don't book with HK Airlines as a Velocity Gold/Platinum member now and expect lounge access, unless flying in business class and included with the ticket).

Thanks very much for the update Chris. Do you know if VA would codeshare other HX flights as well to connect onto VA's MEL-HKG flight? e.g. MEL-HKG-PVG, etc.

It doesn't need to be codesharing, but do I get two boarding cards or only one when checking-in, and will the luggage be sent directly to the final destination? It can be stressful to pass the immi control twice at HKG for the connected flight.

QF and CX have a deal to fly to cities in China through HKG, but I don't know the details. 

VA will 'interline' on routes between HK and China, but not codeshare. This means that provided all of the IT systems are in place and you book your journey on the one ticket, you *should* be able to check-in from your origin through to your final destination with boarding passes in hand and bags tagged through.

Codesharing is not sustainable for Virgin Australia, especially the service is now still pretty empty.

So has anyone flown this route yet? Wonder which blog will be the first to write up a review on this one. Flying J class in Aug, keen to hear some stories about what to expect on this service.