A few months ago, Virgin Australia and Japan’s largest airline ANA expanded their partnership to allow Velocity Points holders to book reward seats with ANA.
For a while, this was only available via the Virgin call centre – but now, Velocity Frequent Flyers can book seats much more conveniently via the Virgin Australia website.
ANA flies from Sydney and Perth to Tokyo and onwards to destinations in Europe, Asia and North America.
While you can search for reward seat availability via the Virgin Australia website, it may be easier to use United’s website instead (both airlines are part of the Star Alliance) as it has better functionality. If you can find a seat there, it should be available to book via Virgin as well.
Here’s the points required for reward seats:
Velocity Frequent Flyer members can also earn Velocity points and status credits on paid ANA fares. This includes both NH-coded flights and those offered as a VA codeshare, though you’ll earn more on the latter.
Travellers can book ANA flights between Australia and Japan as Virgin Australia codeshare flights via the Virgin website.
Virgin’s partnership with ANA unlocks benefits across 12 domestic connections for travellers within Japan, including Sapporo, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Osaka-Itami, Kochi, Osaka-Kansai, Kumamoto, Nagoya, Nagasaki, Oita, Okinawa and Miyazaki.
Virgin Australia also operates its own Cairns-Tokyo (Haneda) service, which launched last month.
More information about the partnership, earn rates and benefits is available on Virgin’s website.
Notably, Velocity Silver, Gold and Platinum members travelling on an ANA operated flight with a Virgin Australia flight number will earn bonus points of 50%, 75% and 100% respectively.
Gold and Platinum members travelling on ANA operated flights from Australia to Japan with a VA or NH flight number, and ANA operated flights within Japan with a VA flight number, will receive benefits including priority check-in, priority baggage and additional checked baggage allowance – but sadly no lounge access (yet).
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