Virgin Australia scores high in reward seat availability survey

Does it differentiate between domestic flights, where there is a much higher frequency of flights daily and therefore much higher chance of getting a seat,  versus international flights where there is a lower frequency and subsequently a lower chance of getting a seat?

Isn't the survey a bit skewed if it doesn't take these kinds of details into account? 

I never redeem my points on domestic flights since it is often cheaper to buy a ticket, so Virgin is useless for me because they hardly fly anywhere internationally. So putting them higher on the list than Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and Qantas is deceiving because they Virgin don't offer the international destinations.

Ausflyer this is an untrue statement from you as Virgin do offfer international destinations to there velocity members with V Australia and there partner airlines.

The method that IdeaWorksCompany follows in this survey is highly questionnable. They do not mention the class of travel but I am assuming it's economy only. They don't mention the route selection for this search nor justify it. Had they included business/first in their searches the resulting table would have been quite different. We all know how difficult it is to score a transpacific seat in J or F on QF, let alone for 2. It's a similar story for LH where they block off F seats up to 2 weeks prior to departure. And ditto for EK where now it's almost impossible to find a vacant F reward seat between AU and the UAE.

Personally I fing redeeming on a short/domestic sector better value than on a long/medium haul flight. For example compare MEL/SIN/MEL and MEL/SYD/MEL.

For MEL/SIN/MEL a return classic redemption in Y would cost you 60,000 points. A commercial booking would cost you $844.

Since, you're able to buy points from a range of rates from 500 points for $20 to 20,000 points for $557.5; the average rate per point works out to be about $0.034.

Consequently the opportunity cost of redeming your points for the MEL/SIN/MEL sectors is $2,040. That is $1,196 more than the cost of a commercial booking.

On the other hand with MEL/SYD/MEL, a return classic redemption in Y would cost you 16,000 points, with a commercial booking costing $260. The opportunity cost for that would be $544 i.e. only $284 more.

Upshot is, it's actually more cost effective to redeem on short haul flights.

This maybe the case for domestic legs, but if any of you have tried using velocity points to get etihad / singapore flights it is the most painful process in the world. As the availability is not online, the customer service rep needs to first check availability, and then call the partner airline to check for availability of rewards seats, spent an hour on the phone one day checking out options for about 3 weeks worth of dates with 0 availability

Congratulations Virgin Australia! This is the outcome of the competition between the two airlines in Australia. It is very good for commuters of both Qantas and Virgin Australia.

I am very surprised of the lack of full-service airlines in the top ten, more shocked at my some of my favourite airlines, Cathay Pacific 56.4% and Emirates 45%.

Again, well done to Virgin Australia, four awards in two months.

Geez, some people need to relax! It's clear from the article that the survey is looking at the availability of any seat - to see how easy it is to redeem points for a seat. It doesn't make any statement beyond that remit, so not much point reading in conspiracies (let's face it, the survey is based on a point in time that is now in the past, which has no influence on whether the reward seat you want today or into the future will be available - it's just indicative of how easy or hard it *might be*). 

Re: Virgin Australia reward seat availability on their international services - I didn't find it very hard at all to score a Business MEL-LAX seat, they seem to fairly generous with reward seats, including on domestic flights (on some flights I noticed they offer as many reward seats as there are actual free seats!). Yes, some international partner airlines rewards need to be booked over the phone (just like with Qantas) but more than a few (Ethihad in particular pretty integrated) can be searched and booked using Virgin's Velocity website (although I find its better to redeem rewards directly with the airline you are searching - Singapore Airline reward flights are cheaper and more available to book directly through KrisFlyer for example). 

Qantas Classic Reward Seats are much harder to find, but yes they more of their own metal flying to more destinations overseas, so if that's a key factor for you then that may influence your preferred choice of Frequent Flyer Program. They also have the draw-back in they cost more points for the same zone 

Re: Qantas and Virgin Classic Reward Seats and difference in minimum redemption costs, here's a comparison (I won't do all, but three typical long flight distances):

Zone Three (1,201 - 2,400)   Business  QF  36,000   VA  33,800 

Coast to Coast                       Economy  QF  18,000   VA  16,900

Zone Six (4,801 - 5,800)        Business.  QF. 72,000.  VA  70,000 (on Virgin Atlantic)

MEL to Hong Kong.                Economy.  QF  36,000.  VA.  35,000

Zone Eight (7,001 - 8,400).    Business   QF 96,000.  VA  94,000

MEL to LAX.                           Economy.  QF 48,000.  VA 47,000

Not to mention, with Virgin as a Platinum member you earn 10 points per dollar spent domestically - which for a MEL-SYD Business return flight you earn 10,590 points compared to just 4,296 Qantas Frequent Flyer points earnt for the same MEL- SYD Business return flight as a Qantas Platinum / Platinum One member. (Internationally Virgin also rewards with a 100% cabin bonus in Business compared to only 50% cabin bonus for Business with Qantas). It's therefore quicker to earn rewards with Virgin.