Virgin Atlantic vs Virgin Australia airfare for Sydney-Hong Kong

Does anyone know why there would be a difference in fare price for VS flight SYD - HKG when bookin through Virgin Atlantic website compared to Virgin Oz website? Is it a bit like hotel/accomm websites where hotels release a certain number of "special fares" to booking websites? As a side note, if I book a SYD-HKG flight through VS with a VS flight number, would I still get FF and SC points through Velocity?

Airlines can only co-operate on pricing with approval of the appropriate regulatory/competition bodies. Therefore it is very common for airlines that interline and/or codeshare without joint ventures approved by competition authorities to have different prices. So Virgin Atlantic & Australia may be 'partners/friends', but do not (to my knowledge) have approval to co-operate on pricing.

The pricing can differ for various reasons, but as one example, some (not all) codeshare agreements involve the marketing airline buying a certain number of 'blocked' seats off the operating airline. Therefore the marketing airline, needs to price in order to sell all its seats and belly space (frieght). A similar situation occurs with Qantas/LAN (oneworld partners but no JV) and South African/Qantas (approval to codeshare on duopoly route - but must 'compete' on pricing).

I don't know enough about Velocity, so someone else will need to answer that.

Under a codeshare agreement certain 'fare buckets' (normally the cheapest ones) may not be available to partners.

On SYD-HKG vv. I have always found the VX code to be cheaper (often by a lot)

I find Virgin Atlantic the better of the two ,especially with award flights, ie Virgin Atlantic award  Melb to Auckland in business class only  30,000 points return using their  partner Air New Zealand.this has to be the best business FF award across the ditch

Hi Salty J. If you choose to fly VS you can attribute your miles to Velocity and earn status credits. http://www.velocityfrequentflyer.com/content/Earn/Airlines/PointsEarn/index.htm#virginatlantic

Thanks Mont80. I am aware that ican attribute points to Velocity from VS, but wanted clarification if I could do so if it was both marketed and operated by VS?

When using points, on SYD HKG Upper class, Virgin Atlantic points is much better value.

Virgin Atlantic is 40k points each way + ~$220 taxes

Virgin Velocity is 57,800 points each way + $xxx taxes

VS is definitely better value when it comes to reward flights. 40k economy, 60k PE, 80k Upper class return!