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.

Happy Birthday.

Exactly, BA and Qantas have the monopoly on the route at the moment and so Virgin being allowed on the route would be competition. It would also allow feeder services for domestic and Pacific flights if Virgin Blue were to expand.
Wonder where Virgin’s stopover would be? Singapore considering the SQ/VS relationship, Hong Kong for the continuation of current A340-600 services or Shanghai if nogatiations fail with HKG?

So you don’t think that the man who drove a tank down 5th Avenue, dressed up as Elvis, went naked on stage or publicly has gone up against Coca Cola, EMI and BA, just purely flew to Basra out of the kindness out of his heart? There was no media manipulation involved considering he wants to fly to Iraq or has been constantly in the news for the last few weeks? Ok, I agree that it was very nice of him to fly to Iraq (laden with media personnel) to help the people, it was a good gesture, but I just cannot understand how you cannot see it as a “kill two birds with one stone” publicity stunt.

And who said we were criticising him? I think Branson is a genius and I very much like him. He publicly works magic with his flamboyant trademark of outlandish publicity stunts. But honestly, it is rather obvious that his kind act and constant media coverage in many ways is just for publicity. Even Branson has stated,
“Using yourself to get out and talk about it is a lot cheaper and more effective than a lot of advertising”
So why should him flying into Basra or fighting for Concorde be any different?

Looking a little wearied with the Iberia colours if I do say so myself.

Lasham is QLA I believe.