(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
Virgin’s V Australia, will begin flights to Thailand by November and South Africa early next year as it attempts to reduce its dependence on the highly competitive Australia-US route by expanding its international network. In the latest sign of the extent of the difficulties it is having on the trans-Pacific route, V Australia has delayed the start of flights between Melbourne and Los Angeles by three months to December 1 and will offer only two services a week instead of the planned three. The delivery of V Australia’s fourth 777-300 has also been delayed slightly to next month.
Virgin Blue’s chief executive, Brett Godfrey, said our flights to South Africa earlier than planned was a better way for the airline to "spread the risk". "It’s not a desperate measure – it’s far from it. It would be desperate if we just left the plane parked in Sydney for nine hours," he said today. "As far as I was concerned the trans-Pacific had more than enough capacity at the moment and I was loathe to put more on until things turned."
V Australia will begin flying twice weekly services between Brisbane and Phuket on November 22 and once a week between Melbourne and the Thai tourist city on December 3. The carrier will also offer two flights a week between Melbourne and Johannesburg, beginning on March 13. The fledgling carrier is already using three 777s to maintain daily services between Sydney and LA and thrice weekly between Brisbane and the US.
Mr Godfey said the regional market had "proved resilient" compared with long-haul routes to Europe, which had been "decimated", while the US "was in the same ballpark" as Europe. The trans-Pacific route has turned in just six months from a cosy duopoly between Qantas and United Airlines to one of the most competitive long-haul routes out of Australia following the entry of V Australia and US carrier Delta Air Lines. Mr Godfrey said he doubted the international travel market would deteriorate further but it was still too early to predict whether an improvement was imminent.
"We have been bumping around the bottom …. [but] I don’t think it’s going to get any worse. We are not seeing the depths of last March," he said. V Australia last week applied for approval from the International Air Services Commission to begin daily return services to Nadi from December, as well as the right to replace Pacific Blue’s 737-800s on the between Sydney and Fiji.
Australian flights and travel news