Any suggestions on how to maximise 500K Velocity points to South America?

Flights & Airfares
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I am Velocity platinum with ~500K points,

My GF and I want to go to south america (Brazil, Argentina and Peru) next year. What are my options for using my points to get us there? Departing Sydney into Rio or Buenos Aires.

Thanks

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Hi Sasha - your trip sounds remarkably like one that we did earlier this year, although we used Qantas points.\r\n\r\n\r\nDo Virgin actually fly there from Oz?

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Given you have Velocity points, your options are:

  • SYD > LAX (Virgin or Delta) and then LAX > RIO/LIM using Delta
  • SYD > AKL > Buenos Aires on Air NZ.
You’ll need to work out flight distances and then compare the airline against the Velocity redemption chart (https://www.velocityfrequentflyer.com/content/Redeem/Airlines/PointsTables/).

Finding award availability to LAX is very competitive and you’d want to start looking 11 months in advance. The AKL>Buenos Aires flight has variable availability so you’d want to monitor it for a while and see when it’s released. You can view AirNZ availability on united.com.

One other option is Sydney to Abu Dhabi to Sao Paulo on Etihad, but this will cost a lot of points and dollars (given the new Velocity carrier charge).

The seats you want to find are high in demand, so you will need to spend a bit of time to secure them.

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