IMHO you need to look closely at the option of transferring all of your Velocity points into Singapore Airlines.

Although you lose in terms of total number of points, you gain in that the redemption rate under the Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer program is commensurately less. I just booked a first class Sydney-London and it was 115,000 pts or thereabouts one way - try nearly 200,000 in the Virgin scheme!

Virgin simply do not fly to London. So you have to use their partners, which practically speaking means Etihad or Singapore Airlines. The Virgin Australia web site is absolute crap - doesn't show most of of rewards that may be available on partner airlines, so you have to spend time learning how to search for reward seats on their partner airlines and then call them and hope the agent has a clue what they are doing...

And that is where you hit a major problem or two...Singapore Airlines keeps those precious reward seats for its own members for the most part! IME Etihad reward seats may not be visible to the call centre agents at Virgin. So...you want to use your points on Singapore, you need to transfer them to Singapore first and use the Singapore system to book your seats...

For these reasons I've abandoned using Virgin Velocity totally...

..so join KrisFlyer (it's free) and search their award space to get an idea of what's available. Transfer the points from Virgin to Singapore KrisFlyer when you feel comfortable about your options...

...there are articles on making the points transfer if you Google for them...

...unless you want to use your Virgin points for travel inside of Australia, IMHO you are probably totally wasting your time with Virgin Velocity...

...also once in Singapore KrisFlyer your points can be used on any Star Alliance airline - can't find a flight on Singapore, then try Thai, and so forth...

...my plan would be to set the goal of a London or Europe to Australia reward in business class on Singapore Airlines...if you are a few points short there are ways to build up those points and / or buy at the time of reward redemption...

...or get the reward seat as far as Singapore and use a low cost carrier in business class to round off the trip (e.g. Scoot typically A$400-$500 one way in their business class recliner seats)...


...Virgin Velocity has a makeshift frequent flyer scheme muddled together for international travel; Air NZ (waste of time - hardly any reward seats), Hawaiian (waste of time if you want reward seats in business class using Virgin points), Singapore (releases rewards to its own member), Etihad (Virgin agents can't see the reward seats when you try to book), Virgin's own flights to USA (rewards only periodically available and often absent in premium classes) = pretty damned useless for international travel in business of first using points!!!


So...use tho points for Australian business class travel if that's part of your plan...otherwise forget Virgin....Singapore is your exit strategy.

Once in Australia you may elect to use Virgin for domestic travel and simply keep transferring those points to Singapore (unless you want to redeem for domestic Australian travel)...others use Qantas and book the point earn to AA for rewards across the OneWorld alliance...but that's another story...

PS London to Singapore is 68,000 pts on Singapore airlines using their website: pick the 777-300ER flight for a shot at the the latest business class seats...you should get around 52000 after your transfer...you can boost that total using he Virgin and Singapore online shopping malls or transfer some points from a credit card or hotel scheme (buy 20,000 SPG points and transfer to Singapore).