I'm in HK and received a brochure from Virgin-Atlantic as part of an industry body magazine I receive. It said in small type that Virgin Blue would participate in Virgin-Atlantic's flying club later in the year.

I can't remember the exact wording, and I've thrown out the brochure now, but I remember thinking that the wording implied that Flying Club would be Virgin Blue's frequent flyer program.

This would be great news as the Virgin Awards are a much better value since Qantas murdered us with the increases this year.
Not to mention the dreaded assisted booking fee.
It would be awesome to have a new way to earn when flying in
Domestic Au ^ Come on Richard! Nowwwww :-: :-: :-:

I am now enrolled in The Virgin Program as a result of those increases
and earning in ways I never could with the Qantas program. ^

Hilton hotel stays give 1000 VF miles worth double that of Qantas
Sprint allows US members to earn VF miles.
80,000 miles gets Upper Class to London anywhere from the US they fly.
Virgin Blue would be the icing on the cake.

Hertz and Avis Car rentals earn 1k on VF for as a little as a 1 day car rental
Hyatt 50 k gold passport points earns 29k Qantas points but 50k Hyatt points equals 35k VF miles ^
Making it worth 70,000 Qantas points in comparison. Then if that isn't good enough the lower redemption levels too boot.
Virgin Rocks ^
They even had availability from LHR to SYD in Upper Class for the few dates I looked into next year.
Qantas still had none in biz or first with the increases
I owe much to Qantas for their increases.
It made me walk away from giving them my tens of thousands in revenue needlessly.
It all goes to other One World partners and VF now......
I'm sure they don't miss me a bit

I would go as far as to say 70% of the users on the qantas forum are looking for a solid reason to leave QF if only another global airline would step up to the plate. Another 10% are locked into contracts (although not enforcable by law in AU) , and the other 20% think they have built up too much rapport with Qantas (status credits etc) or are too comfortable with how QF operates to change.

I could go on for hours about this topic but it wouldn't achieve anything beyond cutting some deep wounds.

This would make sense. Joining an existing scheme would be smewhat cheaper than starting your own up. Virgin-Blue have made it pretty obvious that whatever they do it will be involving their sister brands.

I doubt that Virgin Blue will share Virgin Atlantic's FF program. More likely, the Virgin Atlantic reference related to a code share relationship like the one already in place between Virgin Blue and United.

Other reasons I think it is unlikely:

*Virgin Atlantic's program is geared for long distance sectors, Virgin Blues would need to be related to short segments.
*Ownership - the companies do not have the same ownership. Virgin Atlantic is half owned by Singapore Air, while Virgin Blue is half owned by Virgin Atlantic - this would require Virgin Blue to buy miles from Virgin Atlantic and then Virgin Atlantic to buy seats from Virgin Blue - lots of overhead and potential liability.
*Virgin Atlantic's program is geared to be competitive with UK and US programs while Virgin Blue's Program needs only to be competitive with Qantas and Air New Zealand.
*Virgin Blue likes to portray itself as an innovator and frankly there is nothing innovative about Virgin Atlantic's FF prog.

That all said it would be nice if there had been a unified FF program for some time for Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Express, Virgin Blue, Pacific Blue, Virgin Nigeria etc and it would be nice if they created a merged program going forward (or better yet drop the plethora of brands and just have a unified Virgin Airlines brand covering them all) but I won't hold my breath (ownership is probably the biggest issue).

Hope this is not the case

I am holding out hope simply because everything I read says that Mr.Branson wants to fly more planes in and out of LHR,Hong Kong and Sydney and other major destinations.
Putting every thing under one umbrella makes perfect sense and creates less brand confusion.It also gives the opportunity for Virgin to compete as one global brand.
Rather then the current split the divisions and regional brands up.
By not merging they give giant Alliances like Star and One World a better platform to keep market share.IMO this would let Virgin go after more of the fully engaged One World/Star Crowd (self Included)
I would throw my elite status out the window not to deal with Qantas at all and their anti customer policies.
And that is saying it politely.

Mr Branson wants a lot of things but in reality doesn't get them that often - in the end he is a master of self promotion but not necessarily of running companies. The fact that the virgin group only owns one Virgin company 100% (Virgin Rail which nobody in their right mind would want to buy) means that in many cases Branson does not have ultimate say in the companies after the initial launch period.

With the Virgin branded airlines the ownership is:

Virgin Atlantic - Virgin Group 51% Singapore Airlines 49%
Virgin Blue - Virgin Group 25% Patrick Corporation 62.42%
Virgin Nigeria - Virgin Atlantic 49% Local Investors 51%
Virgin Express - Virgin Group 0% DAT Air Group 100%

Virgin Sun (a european holiday charter airline) failed several years ago and Virgin Express has essentially failed as well and will likely cease to exist as a Virgin branded company. Virgin USA if it launches will be limited to 49% non-US ownership so the Virgin Group will never be the majority shareholder.

Branson actually is pretty clever in putting the Virgin brand on many companies worldwide - gives the impression that they are all subsidiaries of the same corporation which isn't really the case at all.

Virgin Blue is pretty unlikely to adopt a common FF prog with Virgin Atlantic (or Virgin Nigeria, Virgin USA for that matter for all the reasons mentioned before) - beyond anything else, if Virgin Nigeria hasn't adopted it (and it offers longhaul service in 3 classes) I don't see Virgin Blue's current model working with it (nor do I see Patrick paying for it).

For the record I also think that Virgin Blue has peddled a lot of hype and in my experience have not lived up to most of it - their customer service is really pretty poor - especially if you want more than 'fun' interactions. I think if they do introduce a FF program many of the people who feel that QF is difficult will find their main problems were with FF redemption and that DJ is just as bad, if not worse. Any DJ FF prog is likely to be copied from LCC progs like Southwest etc - possibly with a high award tie in with Virgin Atlantic (similar to AirTrans other carrier awards) & possibly Singapore Air (of course DJ will proclaim it is a revolutionary program - yada yada yada but I doubt it will be that different).

Each of the Virgin airlines was established to fill a niche and while Ansett's death expanded DJ's possibilities I just don't see enough similarity. DJ set up the blue rooms to compete with QF (and sells access), while Virgin Atlantic only lets premium pax use its club lounges (a copy of BA).

I will be pleasantly suprised if I am wrong but I doubt it.

Oh - for the record, I am a shareholder in both DJ and QF.

This gets juicier now with the takeover bid by Toll for Patrick saying they want to sell off the stake, or most of it, in DJ and that Virgin Group may well end up with a meaty controlling interest. This could change the dynamics. I wonder also if SQ (remember part owners of VS) may also come to the party on this one despite saying they had no interest in DJ recently.

Although as I watch the few DJ shares I still have dwindle in value I wonder

I can't imagine for a moment that DJ will adopt the Virgin UK scheme. FWIW.

A far simpler system is more likely, such as the Southwest one I mention above - 1 free flight per 10 paid etc.

Cost to DJ is then near nil for all awards as all awards are capacity controlled on part empty flights.

I rented a car this week from Euro cars and they had a sign there saying anyone who rented in July and August and showed a DJ ticket would get free entry passes to the Virgin Blue Rooms.

We had QF tickets, but as always, I cheekily asked if girl could swing us a couple, but said she needed to add the DJ flights numbers to computer to generate them, but it was a nice offer. ^

Agreed that capacity control seems to be the key to making the FF program - any FF program - not just work but be profitable. In that regard, note that Southwest has just moved the goalposts on its Rapid Rewards program:

"Beginning February 10, 2006, all Awards issued will have no systemwide blackout dates and will be subject to seat restrictions. Restricting the number of seats for Awards helps us maintain our low-fare leadership and keeps the program lucrative for you.

Please plan ahead when making your flight reservations as certain holiday or peak travel periods will be in high demand and your desired flight may not be available for Award travel."

Interesting that AFAIK the only US airline that offered redemption on the basis that if there's an empty seat it's yours can no longer sustain that model. Presumably they looked at increasing the redemption cost in credits (which would have the same effect of reducing the overall number of award seats redeemed) and decided that controlling the inventory would earn them more in paying customers.

Of course anyone can get entry to a Blue Room for the $5 casual entry rate. They seem to have defeatured this on the website in the last few days so I wouldn't be suprised if they drop the casual program completely in favor of the annual passports.

But you can't get into a QP for a sensible one time fee.

Hence its attractiveness in that offer.

I talked our way into the QP in Darwin this morning, but it took some doing.

[QUOTE=eamus]Agreed that capacity control seems to be the key to making the FF program - any FF program - not just work but be profitable. In that regard, note that Southwest has just moved the goalposts on its Rapid Rewards program:QUOTE]

It may be one of the key drivers leading to profitability but it also the cheif motivator to deter all possible future seat revenue and partnership activity from this traveler.
Continental was the first airline I defected from back in the late 90s with a unusually stingy amount of seats being made available for award redemption.
It was the best thing that could happened as I sought out other opportunities and found the grass much greener elsewhere
It's a fine line they walk.Today I am clearly parked in programs that play fairly and have a track record for doing so.

NZ Airpoints now does this, but with a twist. Only valid on NZ metal and the cost in airpoints is whatever the fare is for that seat (there are also other discounted award seats that are capacity controlled). So consumer gets more award availability, but may be at a higher cost.