How do you snaffle business class upgrades with Velocity points?

im now a gold member, we have always been economy flyers, but a few trips, my last shouting myself a business upgrade got me to gold and ive managed to accrue a couple hundred thousand points. now all i need to do is find 2 return flights from melb - LA that i can upgrade two seats each way to business. preferably in december. am i asking for the impossible, what are the chances? or is there a better month to fly.....i didnt realise it would be this hard to find a seat let alone 2 x return. hubby has never flown business before and id really love to be able to book this for him as a surprise for xmas.

Mid December isn’t bad as fewer business related bookings as is mid-week bookings. But yes start with flexible economy tickets and go from there.

This is in the Virgin Australia section, so she probably means Velocity Gold and flying on VA.

thanks everyone, i was intending on getting the freedom fares and then upgrading from there. i would just hate to book them and pay more for the freedom fares as opposed to cheap economy tickets and then not get any kind of upgrade that would really suck! im looking at beginning of dec - just before xmas...last year i done this same flight and it wasnt full so fingers crossed!

I travel BNE-LAX or SYD-LAX 4 or 5 times a year with VA. Where I haven't booked J, I've always booked Premium Economy and I've always had an upgrade request granted despite no award availability showing. I am not so bold as to believe this is par for the course and that there is likely a bit of luck at play here also!

I have gotten award seats on BNE-LAX return before but booked one direction about 10 months out and the other direction 4 months out.