Virgin invites Qantas frequent flyers to ‘switch-a-roo’ to Velocity

Virgin Australia is targeting Qantas’s most loyal customers at a time of public discontent with the national carrier.

Virgin Australia is making a move on Qantas’s most loyal customers, offering to status match gold frequent flyers at a time of public discontent with the flying kangaroo.

In a cheeky nod to its target, the “Velocity switch-a-roo” campaign will award Qantas gold members with a gold trial membership for 12-months.

Platinum frequent flyers are also invited to apply to be fast-tracked to Virgin Australia’s top status tier after three-months of gold membership.

Velocity frequent flyer CEO Nick Rohrlach said the “switch-a-roo” offer came about after the airline received a significant number of requests from members of other loyalty programs.

“Since the July school holidays, we have been inundated with requests from customers of competitor airlines who want to move their loyalty to Virgin Australia, but don’t want to start from the bottom of the status ranks,” Mr Rohrlach said.

“The switch-a-roo campaign is a game changer for these members who can now almost

immediately climb to Velocity gold status by submitting a simple application on the Velocity website.”

He said Virgin Australia offered business and leisure travellers access to lounges, preferential seating, priority security screening and boarding and checked baggage “without the high price tag”.

“We also know we can offer something no one else can, and that’s our wonderful people, who deliver our service with a smile no matter what seat number is on your boarding pass,” said Mr Rohrlach.

“Importantly, our operational performance is also really strong, and we’ve achieved record low cancellation rates over the past few weeks.”

Virgin Australia has opened a new look lounge in Melbourne to mark the restart of Australia's busiest domestic route – Melbourne to Sydney.

Qantas shrugged off the Virgin announcement, pointing out the airline’s loyalty program added half a million more frequent flyers in the last year.

A Qantas spokeswoman said their members could use points to travel with the airline to 50 international destinations including London, Rome and Singapore, or to a further 850 destinations with partner airlines.

“While all Australian airlines have faced operational challenges, we’ve seen a significant turnaround in August and September and are getting back to the high standards our frequent flyers and customers rightly expect from us,” said the spokeswoman.

Qantas Frequent Flyers now boasts 14 million members, to Velocity’s 10.9 million.

Virgin Australia also announced the progressive return of in-flight Wi-Fi to the airline’s Boeing 737 fleet starting before Christmas and taking about 18-months.

Business class travel would be able to access Wi-Fi for free while economy passengers would have to pay.

And in a tie-up designed to counter Qantas’s points deal with David Jones, Velocity members will be able to redeem their points at Myer’s online store in the first stage of the partnership.

Mr Rohrlach said the move would help members stretch their dollar further at the retailer.

Myer chief customer officer Geoff Ikin said they were “excited to be working with Velocity frequent flyer” as the program’s exclusive retail redemption partner.

“This marquee partnership is an innovative way for Myer to engage with new and existing customers to drive further growth, revenue and acquisition,” Mr Ikin said.

Virgin Australia’s move on frequent flyers came after the airline notched a fifth consecutive month of superior on-time performance to Qantas, according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium.

In August, Virgin Australia landed almost 70 per cent of flights on-time, ahead of Qantas on 66.14 per cent and Jetstar’s 57 per cent.

The statistics did not include Rex which has consistently finished ahead of its larger competitors in the on-time performance stakes this year.

With a seventh Boeing 737 now joining its fleet, Rex was expected to increase frequencies on its Golden Triangle services between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.