1. About this policy

Virgin Australia is committed to protecting the privacy of your personal information.

This Privacy Policy tells you how Virgin Australia Airlines Pty Ltd and its group companies listed below (“we”/ “our”/ “us”) will handle your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles or, where applicable, other data protection laws (such as those in force in the European Union).


Virgin Australia Group companies covered by this Privacy Policy

Virgin Australia Airlines Pty Ltd

Virgin Australia International Airlines Pty Ltd

Virgin Australia Airlines (SE Asia) Pty Ltd

Virgin Australia Regional Airlines Pty Ltd

Virgin Australia Cargo Pty Ltd
 

In this Privacy Policy our “related entities” include the Virgin Australia Group companies covered by this Privacy Policy and Velocity Frequent Flyer Pty Ltd and Velocity Rewards Pty Ltd.

We also provide specific privacy collection notices relating to our particular services and practices (“Privacy Statements”). Access our current Privacy Statements.

We will update our Privacy Policy if the way we handle personal information changes or as required by law.  Updates to our Privacy Policy will be published on our website.

2. Collecting your personal information

2.1 Types of information we collect

The personal information that we collect will depend on your relationship with us and the service you have requested. It may include:

  • your identity and contact details including; name, address, email address, phone number, date of birth, gender, passport or other identification details and photograph;
  • payment information in connection with a flight or cargo booking or additional products or services purchased during your flight or through our website or our Contact Centre;
  • itinerary and other travel related information (including any dietary and special assistance requirements);
  • IP address or MAC address when using our website or mobile applications (and other associated details, including the city associated with your IP or MAC address, the date and time of your visit to our website, pages viewed, the URL of the website that you viewed before our website and the type of browser you use);
  • if you use social media, any information that you allow the social media site to share with us;
  • Velocity Frequent Flyer membership information;
  • your feedback and, opinions about our products and services and claims that you have made (such as in relation to mishandled, lost or damaged luggage);
  • information relating to your dealings with us and our related entities, including insights about you so that we can better understand your preferences and interests; and
  • information about your relationship with one of our corporate, government or business customers if you travel under their account, include an ABN in your booking, your booking is linked to a Virgin Australia Business Flyer account, or you interact with us on behalf of the relevant corporate, government body or business; and
  • information in relation to your past or current employment if you apply for a job with us.

 

2.2 Collecting health and other sensitive information

We may collect information about you which is considered sensitive under applicable privacy and data protection laws. This information may include:

  • information in relation to your health if relevant to your travel with us, for example if you make a Special Assistance request or a meal request indicative of a medical condition or food intolerance, we are required to determine your fitness to fly, or where you are involved in a safety investigation, accident, complaint or claim; 
  • religious beliefs where you make a meal request indicative of a particular religion (e.g., halal or kosher); and
  • information required for public health and safety purposes, for example to confirm you meet any COVID-19 requirements which apply to your travel.

See paragraph 7 “Job Applicants” for information in relation to the sensitive information that we may collect when you apply for a job with us.

Generally, we will ask for your consent to handle your health or other sensitive information or, in certain circumstances, you will consent to our collection by providing or agreeing that someone else can provide your health or other sensitive information to us.  We may also handle your health or other sensitive information on other legal grounds, including to comply with our legal obligations, to protect your interests (where you are not capable of giving your consent), where it is in the public interest and in relation to legal claims.

2.3 Anonymity

Where possible, we will allow you to interact with us anonymously or using a pseudonym. For example, if you contact our Guest Contact Centre with a general enquiry, you may choose not to provide your name unless we need it to adequately handle your enquiry. However, for most of our functions and activities we usually need your name and contact information.

2.4 How we collect personal information

We collect your personal information in a number of ways. We may collect your personal information directly from you or in the course of our dealings with you, for example when you:

  • provide personal information to us, such as when you make or update a booking, check-in for a flight, purchase our products and services, subscribe to our email or other communications, enter a competition, provide feedback to us or otherwise interact with us;
  • visit our website, social media channels, mobile applications or use our wi-fi services;
  • apply for a position with us;
  • complete a form for us, such as medical clearance, general enquiries, claim and unaccompanied minor forms;
  • register as a travel industry or corporate travel partner, or join Virgin Australia Business Flyer; and
  • contact us online or our Contact Centre. We record calls in and out of our Contact Centre and chats through our online webchat, so we will collect any personal information you provide during these interactions.

We may also collect personal information about you from other people or organisations. This may include our related entities and:

  • a person who makes, changes or enquires about a flight, cargo or other booking on your behalf or who otherwise interacts with us on your behalf (such as a family member or friend, travel or booking agents, sales agents, a business you work for or other representative as part of a corporate or group booking);
  • recruitment agencies and previous employers, if you have applied for a position with us and with your consent;
  • our service providers and contractors (such as ground handlers, cargo handlers, call centre operators, third parties that provide us with services under a white label arrangement, marketing agencies, data analytics and market research providers and sales agencies, payment fulfilment and fraud protection providers and organisations that issue a Virgin Australia Cargo Air Waybill for the carriage of cargo);
  • our airline and non-airline partners, including other airlines listed on your itinerary, car rental providers, hoteliers, airport transfer and parking providers, travel insurance providers and foreign exchange services;
  • third parties who conduct market research or run competitions and other promotions on our behalf or for which we are the sponsor; and
  • government agencies and regulatory authorities, including immigration, border security, law enforcement, and airport security. 

We may combine and compare personal information that we hold about you with other information collected from, or held by, others. We do this to better understand your interests and preferences, which helps us to enhance your experience. More information about why we do this is provided under ‘Why we collect personal information’.

2.5 Why we collect personal information

We collect your personal information for a variety of purposes and on different legal grounds. Most of the time, we collect your personal information so that we can provide you with the services and products that you have requested and to enter into and perform our contract with you. This may include:

  • processing and making arrangements for flight, cargo or other bookings, managing disruptions or cancellations related to your booking and any additional products or services requested by you;
  • operating our loyalty programs, and arranging recognition and benefits in relation to your booking where, you are a frequent flyer member, or your booking is linked to a Virgin Australia Business Flyer account;
  • creating login details for access to our booking sites, such as the Virgin Australia Business Flyer portal;
  • verifying your identity;
  • communicating with you before and after your flight, holiday or experience including to provide flight updates; and
  • determining or handling issues of passenger safety, security and other requirements, including special assistance requirements and medical fitness to fly.

Some information is collected and handled for purposes that you've consented to. This may include:

  • identifying and arranging benefits for you or a business you work for, with our airline and non-airline partners, including frequent flyer program recognition and benefits, complimentary membership and discounts, where you or a business you work for have asked us to do this;
  • providing, operating and contacting you in relation to our market and consumer research activities, competitions, promotions and events, where you have told us that you would like to take part in these;
  • contacting you with marketing and promotional material about our offers or promotions, and those of our related entities, airline and non-airline partners and other third parties; and
  • collecting your health or other sensitive information.

At other times, we collect your personal information to carry out our functions and activities because we have a legitimate business interest in handling your information for these functions and activities. This may include:

  • to develop insights about you so that we can better understand your preferences and interests. We do this to identify products, services that may be of interest to you, personalise your experience and enhance the products and services offered by us, our related entities and our airline and non-airline partners. In these cases, both we and these third parties have an interest in researching and analysing the services our customers want and personalising our offers so we're better able to provide products and services that are relevant to you. We may also use trusted service providers to undertake the process of creating these insights; 
  • to ask for your feedback, including by sending you a feedback survey after your flight; and
  • to help us continuously improve the services and products we offer and respond to your feedback, queries and complaints.

We also collect your personal information to comply with legal, audit, reporting, record-keeping and investigation requirements and for operational, safety, public health, and regulatory compliance purposes.

2.6 Decisions that we make automatically about you

We may make completely automated decisions on certain matters. For example, we (including service providers acting on our behalf, such as those who provide data analysis and business intelligence services) may assess existing or potential customers' interest in us and our and related products/services by logging your interaction with us via our website, our advertisements, the submission of forms or the number of "clicks" that you make on emails that we send you. In certain circumstances, we disclose this information to our trusted partners. The outcome of these activities will help us and our trusted partners to develop insights about you and better understand your preferences and interests. We and our partners may make marketing decisions about you based on these insights.

2.7 What would happen if we did not collect your personal information?

If we cannot collect your personal information as described above, we may not be able to process your flight, cargo or other booking, or your special assistance, medical clearance or other requests. We also may not be able to fully investigate an incident, complaint or claim, or provide you with all or some of our other products and services.
You may not need to provide some of the information that we use on the basis of our legitimate interests. For example, you can disable cookies in your browser.

3 Use and disclosure of your personal information

We will use and disclose your personal information for the purposes described in ‘Why we collect your personal information’.
We may also disclose your personal information:

  • to our related entities;
  • to our airline partners, other airlines and our non-airline partners for partner recognition and benefits;
  • to travel or booking agents;
  • to another person if they made the booking on your behalf (such as a family member or friend, travel or booking agent, sales agent, a business you work for or other representative as part of a corporate or group booking), are named in your booking, or are travelling with you as a support person;
  • to any person who can provide us with the Booking Reference for your booking (located at the top of your itinerary) and confirm the first and last name of one or more passengers included in the booking;
  • to the account holder or card holder of the credit card used to pay for your booking;
  • to our third party product and service providers, including those providing catering, ground handling, cargo handling, transport, accommodation, technology and related support services, third parties that provide us with services under a white label arrangement, call centre services, promotions and prize fulfilments services, marketing and advertising services, data analysis, market research and business intelligence services, payment fulfilment and fraud protection services and security services;
  • to third parties providing digital or other technology services (including digital assistants that utilise voice, virtual and other technology), where you have authorised the third party to receive information that we hold about you;
  • in the event of an emergency or other serious incident, to government departments/officials and agencies, support organisations and persons involved in the incident response, relevant foreign embassies/consulates and to your family member(s) who contact us seeking information about your travel arrangements;
  • to our professional advisers and insurers;
  • in connection with the investigation of fraud or suspicious activity relating to services provided by us, our related entities, our airline partners, other airlines or non-airline partners;
  • where permitted or required by law or order of a court/tribunal; and
  • to law enforcement agencies, regulatory authorities and governments in Australia and around the world and their service providers for security, customs, immigration and public health and safety purposes.

If we need to handle your information for any other purpose, we will only do so with your consent or where you may otherwise reasonably expect us to do so.

4 How long do we keep your personal information?

We will keep your personal information for as long as we reasonably require your personal information for any valid and lawful purpose. These purposes include to provide you with our services and any products that you have requested, exercise our rights and perform our obligations under a contract, investigate and defend actual or potential claims, comply with our legal obligations and other purposes permitted by law.
When it is no longer reasonably necessary for us to keep your personal information, your information will be destroyed or put beyond use. However, we may de-identify data and retain such data for statistical purposes only.

5 Travelling with others, corporate accounts and government travel

If your booking contains more than one guest (whether you are travelling with your family or a friend, or a group booking for 10 or more), then we will collect your personal information from you or the person who made or updated the booking on your behalf. We may also disclose your personal information to the person who made or updated your booking and other persons included in the booking.

If your booking includes an ABN,  is made through a business’ corporate travel agreement or through a government travel agreement (or for official government purposes) with Virgin Australia, or is linked to a Virgin Australia Business Flyer account, we may collect your personal information from and disclose your personal information to the relevant business / government body (or their representative), including your itinerary, information relating to your travel including check-in, “no-show” or boarding status and any incident reports or feedback.

If a business you work for is participating in the Virgin Australia Business Flyer program or you travel on a booking that is linked to a Virgin Australia Business Flyer account, the Privacy Statement for Virgin Australia Business Flyer and Loyalty includes more detailed information about the collection and handling of personal information by Virgin Australia and Velocity as part of Virgin Australia Business Flyer and the Velocity Business Program.

Don’t add an ABN to your booking or provide your booking details to a business, unless you are happy for that business to receive information from us about your booking and travel arrangements, make changes to your booking and receive benefits in relation to your booking (such as loyalty points).

6 Overseas disclosures

We are based in Australia, so your personal information will be processed in Australia. However, we may disclose your personal information to organisations or persons located outside of Australia. The countries in which these organisations or persons are located will depend on the circumstances, but in the course of our ordinary operations, we generally disclose personal information to third parties located in the countries where:

  • you are travelling to or from or you are sending cargo to or from (including to local cargo and ground handlers, law enforcement and security customs and immigration agencies, our airline and non-airline partners who are providing you with a product or service);
  • our third party service providers are located, including, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Turkey, The Philippines, United Kingdom and United States of America; and
  • our Velocity Frequent Flyer Program and Velocity Business Program partners are located. We will only disclose your personal information to an overseas partner where necessary to process a transaction for you.

If we disclose personal information to a third party in a country which does not have equivalent privacy laws to your home country, we will take steps to ensure that you are provided with appropriate safeguards in respect of your personal information. This might include entering into contractual clauses with the third party that place obligations on the third party in relation to their handling your personal information.

7. Job applicants

When you apply for a job with us, we will generally collect the personal information that you include in your application, such as your contact details, career history and education details.  We may also collect sensitive information from you, for example, medical information or criminal history, if it is relevant to the role that you are applying for, and whether you identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, for our Diversity and Inclusion Strategy. We will only collect such sensitive personal information where you have consented to us doing so.

We may also obtain personal information about you from third parties with your consent, for example, from your previous employers or nominated referees. We collect personal information for the purpose of assessing and progressing your application. We will hold your personal information for future job opportunities with us, unless you tell us not to.

We may disclose your personal information to our related entities, your referees and also to third party suppliers that we use to help with our recruitment processes, such as recruitment agencies and organisations that conduct competency or psychometric tests. We may also disclose your personal information to law enforcement agencies to verify whether you have a criminal record.

8. How we use cookies and web-tracking tools

Cookies are tiny files sent to your browser and stored by your browser on your computer or other device that you're using to access our website or use our mobile applications.
Our cookies collect your IP address or MAC address, the city associated with your IP or MAC address, the date and time of your visit to our website, portals, pages or advertisements viewed, the URL of the website that you viewed before our website and the type of browser you use.

We also use web tracking/analytic tools that generate detailed statistics about traffic to our websites, traffic sources and how you interact with advertisements on our websites and third party websites. These tools can also measure and record conversions and sales. 

The cookies and web-tracking tools allow our websites and mobile applications to interact more efficiently with the device you are using and to help us improve the content and functioning of our websites and mobile applications.

We also use cookies to help us and our third party service providers present targeted and customised advertising to you on our website and on third party websites.
Please see our Cookie Policy for more information on our use of cookies and web-tracking tools.

9 Our marketing and your personal information

We use personal information that we hold about you to identify services and products that may be of interest to you. 

We may contact you by email, text message or other digital service (such as through our applications that you install on your device such as mobile or iPad), phone or post to let you know about flight specials, offers and promotions, and those of our airline and non-airline partners; or any new or existing products or services that may be of interest to you pre and post flight; or to remind you to complete your purchase. 

We also use internet-based marketing including targeted online advertising and online behavioural marketing. We may disclose your personal information to our related entities and airline and non-airline partners to allow them to tell you about a product or service that may be of interest to you, based on your transactions with us. Our marketing agencies may also contact you using your personal information that they already hold, or we may provide your personal information to them, in order to serve you with more relevant advertising about our services and products.

You can contact us at any time if you no longer wish to receive marketing materials from us or our related entities.  If you receive a marketing email from us, you can opt-out from that particular category of marketing email by clicking on the "Manage Preferences" link or the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the email. You can also manage your V-mail Sales Alert subscription and unsubscribe from receiving marketing communications in relation to your flights on our website.

10. Storage and security of your personal information

10.1 Our systems

We mostly hold personal information electronically in our IT systems and databases. We also hold personal information in telephone recordings and in hard copy paper files. We use third party service providers to store some personal information.

We take reasonable steps to protect the information that we hold about you from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

We do this by having physical and electronic security systems and by limiting who can access your personal information. We also have online and network security systems in place for our websites, so that the information you provide us online is protected and secure. However, because of the nature of the internet, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information.

Please contact us if you become aware of any breach of security.

10.2 Keeping your booking safe

Your Booking Reference (located at the top of your itinerary) or your Velocity PIN (if you are a Velocity Frequent Flyer member) is like your password for your booking.

You can help us protect your privacy by keeping your Booking Reference and your Velocity PIN safe. Don’t share your Booking Reference or Velocity PIN with any other person, unless you are happy for them to receive information from us about your booking and travel arrangements and to make changes to your booking.

We will only update a flight booking or otherwise provide information in relation a booking (including passenger names, destinations, changes or interruptions to travel or no-shows) or provide copies of itineraries or tax invoices, if our verification criteria are met.

If you believe your Booking Reference or Velocity PIN has been obtained by someone who you do not want to have access to your booking, please notify us immediately.

11. Rights in respect of your personal information

11.1 General – access to and correction of personal data

You have a right to request access to or correction of your personal information held by us.

If you wish to access, correct or update any personal information that we hold about you, please contact us on the details below.  We will need to verify your identity before we can process your request. 

We will respond to your request within a reasonable time of you making the request and give you access in the manner you requested, unless it is unreasonable or impracticable for us to do so.

Sometimes we will be able to respond to your query over the phone, but sometimes we may need your request in writing and we might need some time to gather the requested information and get back to you. These more complex requests usually take us between 14 and 30 days. We might need to send a copy of the information to you by post or we might ask you to come and see us to have a look at the information.

Making a request is free. But depending on what information you request access to, we may need to charge you for giving you access to the information. The charges will not be excessive and we'll let you know if a charge will apply before we proceed with giving you access. There is no charge for correcting your personal information. Please note that if you are making a request from the European Union, your request will be completely free apart from in a very limited number of circumstances. This might include if your request is repetitive or if you have requested further copies of the same information. The fee will be based on the administrative cost of providing the information.

There may be reasons why we cannot give you access to the information that you have requested, or we refuse to correct your personal information. If this is the case, we will let you know these reasons in writing. If we refuse you access or to correct your personal information, you can make a complaint about this, by following the complaint procedures in this Privacy Policy.

If we refuse to correct your personal information that we hold, you can ask us to associate with that information a statement that the information is inaccurate, out-of-date, irrelevant or misleading.

11.2 Specific rights for EU residents only

If you are located in the European Union, then you may have additional rights. Some of these rights will only apply in very limited circumstances.

  • You can withdraw your consent, where we rely on it for processing your personal information, at any time.
  • You can ask us to confirm if we are using your personal information.
  • You can ask us to delete your personal information. This right only applies in limited circumstances and will not usually apply where it remains necessary for us to process your information for the purposes for which it was collected, we are required by law to retain your information or your information is relevant to a legal dispute.
  • You can ask us to stop or restrict how we process your personal information. These rights will apply in limited circumstances and will not usually apply when we need to process your information to carry out our day-to-day business functions or where we have compelling legitimate grounds for processing your information.
  • You can ask us to help you move your personal information to other companies, where this is technically possible and only if we have collected and used your data via automatic means. Other conditions apply.
  • You have the right to be informed and know about any protections that we have put in place when we are transferring your data overseas.

12. How to make a complaint

If you have a complaint about how we have handled your personal information, you can make a complaint by contacting us using the details below.

Once we have received your complaint, we will investigate and respond to you within a reasonable period of time.

We take any privacy complaint seriously and will deal with your complaint fairly and promptly. However if you are not satisfied with our response or how we handled your complaint, you may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at:

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)
GPO Box 5218
Sydney NSW 2001
Phone: 1300 363 992
TTY: 1800 620 241
email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au

If your complaint relates to our airline services (rather than being privacy-related), you can contact the Airline Customer Advocate, which provides a complaint handling and dispute resolution process for eligible airline customers.

If you are located in the European Union, you have the right to complain to the local data protection authority within the EU. You can find the details of your local DPA here. 

13. Changes to our Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. Our Privacy Policy was last updated in December 2022. By continuing to use our website or otherwise continuing to deal with us, you accept this Privacy Policy as it applies from time to time.

We will post all updates to our privacy page.

14. Contact us

You can contact us by:
Email: privacy@virginaustralia.com
Writing to us at:
Privacy Officer
PO Box 1034
Spring Hill QLD 4004
Phone: (07) 3295 3000

Last updated December 2022