Virgin Atlantic to fly to Australia

remember this JA, he may not have saved Ansett but he has employed a large number of ex Ansett staff. why would he splash out near 1/2 a billion dollars to rescue a company thats been badly driven into the ground.

Ansett has no one to blame for it’s downfall but Ansett and Air NZ and the management teams of these companies.

on the point of airfares, i flew from Sydney to Perth for $ 170 about a week ago, thats the cheapest i have ever seen it.

not to mention that both QF and Virgin are throwing out flights for stupidly low prices atm.

the ansett levy is $10.00, i got no worries paying that.

Just to clarify my sentiment guys…
I don’t like SRB, I have no problem with VA coming to OZ nor the other side of its service which I heard about Virgin Pacific.

I agree about the cheaper prices and the competition but I just don’t like him!!!

He was one of the people that could have saved Ansett, but refused and now, We down here have to pay through the nose for flights out of any airport due to the stupid Ansett Levy. He had a chance to help not only a top notch airline, but also everyday people, right from the young people in the maintenence sheds, all the way down to the person going on holidays.

That’s why I don’t like him or his empire!

p.s. Bring back Lufthansa!!!

Just look what the Aussies are missing out on!

I flew in and out of JFK this last weekend, and we taxiied right by the AF Concorde on the inbound, and proceded to park right next to the BA one. I think that’s the closest I’ve ever been to it, not that I’m a big Concorde fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I would have liked to taken a few photos. Alas, my camera was left home, due to the short nature of the trip.

He’ll need Government approval, but then again the Concorde situation has him in the Ministerial good books here (not that I’m insinuating anythging!)

Oh, and by the way, I think it’s a great idea for Virgin to fly to Australia. Continuing service from HKG makes sense. Mongu makes an interesting point in suggesting LAX or SFO as the stop for SYD or MEL (other cities would be a bit too far), a la Air New Zealand. LHR-LAX-SYD would be a 24 hour journey, not counting layover time, which would make it slightly longer than say, LHR-SIN-SYD. But in this time of SARS, the fact that you’re avoiding southeast Asia, might make it a more attractive option for potential customers. Doesn’t Branson have to first get gov’t approval before he can do this, anyway?

Ok, a few comments here. First of all, yes, Mongu, UA are currently the only US carrier to fly to Australia, as they have dailies to SYD from both SFO and LAX. One of those continue onto MEL. And No Saab, they don’t HAVE TO fly there because of the demise of Ansett. UA acquired their Australia routes from Pan Am back in 1986. Of the 10 trips, 8 have been on United, so that’s 16 segments to and fro. 15 of the 16 flights were absolutely packed. The only one that wasn’t was 2 weeks ago, on the way down there. The economy class cabin was exactly half full (133 of 266 seats). I’m not sure about business and first. Ironically on the return, again it was packed. As far as I know, AA never served SYD, but Continental did, however, back in the late 80’s/early 90’s. They haven’t been in there for a while, though.

And yes MapleLeaf, AC serves SYD from YVR, via HNL with a 763. An interesting route, considering they can just fly an A340 or 744 nonstop, and yet I digress.

In the last 3.5 years, I’ve flown to Australia no less than 10 times. I used to see several of those ‘former’ Euro-carriers serving SYD. I asked the tarmac tour guide why Olympic stopped serving 6-months ago, and he didn’t know. Surprising, considering this guy knew pretty much everything about SYD. I really can’t speak for the likes of Alitalia, but I do know there are a number of Italians in Australia, at large.

I can speak for Olympic, and the Greek population down under, however. These are just roundabout numbers, but to my knowledge, there are roughly 750,000 and 250,000 Greeks in Melbourne and Sydney, respectively. That’s roughly one tenth of the entire population of Greece itself, and that doesn’t include Adelaide, Perth, or any of the other big cities. Olympic was serving both SYD and MEL thrice weekly, via BKK on a triangle run. These former OA flights were augmented by both Singapore and Thai, each offering thrice weekly one-stop service via SIN and BKK, respectively. That basically left 9 one-stop, 20+ hour flights per week for the entire Greek population of Australia. My future in-laws (who are from Greece) live in Sydney, and of course they fly ‘back home’ on occassion. Of the 3 aforementioned airlines, who do they prefer to to fly? Considering they don’t speak English too well, they like to fly Olympic, along with every other Greek down under that knows absolutely nothing about the airline industry. And when these same Greeks would try to get a ticket on Olympic and it was booked (which they usually always were, especially from May-September), they turned to the other 2 guys, plus the likes of Emirates, EgyptAir, GulfAir, albeit with at least one more stop each. Those thrice weekly Olympic flights were always full. It is absolutely asinine that they would stop serving SYD and MEL. Then again, Olympic is run by a bunch of morons, so it shouldn’t be too surprising. They might as well stop serving New York, Montreal and Toronto now. Why not?

To an extent, the Australia routes have been the making of some Asian and Middle-Eastern airlines (SIA and Emirates spring to mind).

I believe there is a large market for flights Europe-Australia and certanly Italy and Greece could justify services. I also think there is a market for UK flights from somewhere like Manchester. The BA/Qantas duopoly has conastrained growth and I think there is latent demand.

1. The BA/Qantas flights always seem full (and these are always B744 operated) despite quite high prices and fairly good frequencies ex-LHR.

2. There must be some extra demand (mostly leisure oriented) which would be created if average fare prices came down. I tried to book a ticket MEL-MAN for in July and prices were around £1,200 rtn in Economy. The cheapest I ever paid personally, was £747 rtn in Economy LHR-MEL. Ignoring “specials” and a few yield management quirks, average prices are very high and probably beyond the means of most (multiply the price times 4 or 5 for an average family, then add hotels….it’s a helluva lot!). In theory, the weakness of the Australian Dollar relative to Sterling (and the Euro, for that matter, though to a lesser extent) makes an Australian holiday good value for Brits, apart from the cost of the flight which destroys all the value you would otherwise get.

3. Conclusion – a very viable concept, even given the opportunity cost of tying up a whole bunch of aircraft. The main problem would probably by political (typical BA obstruction to anything incolving VS, plus what are slots like at SYD or MEL or other biggie Australian airports?)

4. Just a thought – do you think The Bearded Wonder’s bucaneer spirit would like the idea of taking on Qantas, and flying via LAX or SFO, instead of the Far East?

it will be either via HK or Shanghai.

Branson wants to use these two ports as Cathay and Qantas are the only 2 carriers on the HK run. Branson said he was not about to avoid or reduce flights to HK, he hopes to add flights to help the local economy.

i for one would love to see him here. JA i dont know where on earth you come up with a statement that Virgin are not welcome.

🙁

Gulf-Air is also planning on flights to Oz, you will (if the plan comes into action) fly from Heathrow, stop at either Bahrain, Abu Dhabi or Muscat, although more likely Bahrain then onto Sydney.
They will probably add another stop, HK or Singapore.

Fair play to Branson, I hope it works for him and takes BA’s hold off the flights.

It makes perfect sense for Virgin. Australia is a huge destination for the British. They already have their own operation in Australia so they don’t need to deal with any other airlines schedules etc.

I don’t see Hong Kong on the radar unless they use it as a way to fill planes with the whole SARS epidemic. It’s obviously not going anywhere anytime soon. Plus southeast asian airports are apparently quite a bit cheaper to fly into than Hong Kong.

Finally, I believe that AC does fly into Sydney from North America as part of STAR with United.

Let them go to Australia….

If Virgin Atlantic aims to go down to Australia and if they got the permission to go down there, why not? At least will help in breaking the Qantas/BA monopoly and give an incentive for lower fares. However, the battle will be fierce and Virgin must play its cards correctly if it wants to survive on the UK-Australia market.

However, Im confident Virgin will make it up. Assuming of course that the UK-Australia market is a dense and thick market similar or like the London – JFK market where Virgin Atlantic first made its appearance

I wish to Branson all the best for this move.

Lucky guess the route to Australia will be via Singapore since they will have better handling charges by Singapore Airlines (who own 49% of Virgin Atlantic).

If they extend the London – Hong Kong to go down to Australia, it will have an impact to the London – Honk Kong market as they will need to add a couple of more aircrafts.

However, I believe that the stop point (either Singapore or Hong-Kong) will depend on the bilateral agreement alterations made by either Singapore and Honk Kong and if they allowed for Fifth freedom right (which will be preferred for Virgin as fifth freedom right means they will allow to pick up traffic from the point they stop while going down to Australia)

But, lets not forget SARSS………..

Yes makes sense.

So far on their web site , there is only an MH code share via KUL.

Thanks folks

Yeah I would guess the A346, as they already operate the type out to Japan.

Hand, it would be a A340-600 as a continuation of the Hong Kong service if approval was given or Shanghai.

BA and Lauda are the only European airlines to fly to Australia I believe. Simpely there is no market from anywhere else in Europe. It just isn’t economically feasible for them to do so with the costs involved. The airlines would have to attract a high yield on the route and European other than BA would be able to do so. Alitalia and Olympic to be fair were only catering for a marginal market of Greek and Italian immigrant communities. I doubt will return many will return unless they can guarantee financial success, which is unlikely because (not to insult) the population of Australia is quite small in comparison and the economic power is quite low. Airlines that used to serve Australia were Olympic, JAT, KLM, Lufthansa and UTA. This was back in the days when airlines went for big worldwide networks rather than profitability, for example, it didn’t matter if BA flew to Auckland or had a Concorde service to Miami!

US airlines use codeshares mainly now. UA has to fly to Australia because it has no partner after Ansett whereas AA has Qantas. AA used to fly to Australia for a short period I believe.

I would guess the A340-600 over the 747-400

Do you know which type VS will operate ? 744? A346?

Not only will it lead to cheaper fares, but there will also be a wider selection of flights available between the UK and Australia. No bad thing!

Ja, I’m really confused by your sentiment. The international airlines have abandoned Australia in droves and yet you are unhappy when one of the world’s leading carriers wants to start flights there?

As far as I know (I stand to be corrected, this is just from memory) the following airlines no longer fly to Australia:

KLM
Lufthansa
Olympic
MEA
Alitalia
Air France
Iberia

And I think Stateside, only UAL flies down under?

Cheap? VS is the equal of Qantas Ja!