Virgin flights to Uluru: How many points do you need?
Can you get a red-hot deal for the red centre?
This week, Virgin announced new flights from Melbourne and Brisbane to Uluru.
It's the first time that the airline has offered services to Ayers Rock to either city (it used to run Sydney-Uluru flights, but those disappeared after its 2020 administration).
Melbourne-Uluru flights will run on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays during peak season, while the Brisbane services operate on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The airline launched the new services, which kick off from June 2024, with $129 sales fares.
As usual, though, I'm curious about whether reward flights on the new route represent good value when there isn't a sale on.
A typical BNE-AYQ flight costs $255 in Economy, or $529 in business.
Booking that as a reward seat costs between 14,100 and 21,900 Velocity Points for an Economy seat.
For most dates in the month after launch, I found plenty of availability at the lower end of that scale.
That effectively means you're getting $18 in value for each 1,000 Velocity Points you spend.
A one-way Business seat on the same flights typically costs $529, but, as is often the case with Virgin, availability is much tighter and you'll need to look well in advance.
If you can score a Business seat, it's actually slightly lower in value than the Economy option, working out at about $14 for each 1,000 points spent.
My goal is normally to get at least $20 in value for each 1,000 points, so that's not the best deal ever.
But it's good to have extra options to an airport that until now has only offered Qantas and Jetstar services.
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