Virgin Australia & Etihad Airways Partnership Ending In 2025

Don't think Etihad fly to Brisbane (BNE) rn. So it is just Sydney and Melbourne that are their only Aussie routes

Etihad has always struck me as being very weak in Australia, though PER seems to be an on-and-off discussion, but nothing has come to fruition yet. Etihad has never served NZ, which is fair enough, since it’s too long and thin. Advantage QR!

Qatar and Qantas are part of OneWorld, so why go after Virgin Australia? Or are Qantas and Qatar not the best of friends?

@ DaBluBoi -- Good catch, thank you. Fixed!

@ Evan -- There's a lot of very bad blood between Qatar and Qantas, as Qantas has for years done everything it can to block Qatar's expansion in the country. That's because Qantas (selfishly) wants to limit foreign competition, and is most focused on its Emirates partnership.

I"m sure Etihad will still have interline agreements with both Virgin and Qantas which will allow them to add on connections where needed within Australia after/ before flights to Abu Dhabi. They all do. Try booking a flight on United to some place like Adelaide and, even thought UA is somewhat close with Virgin, you'll still see them offer a connection from sydney to adelaide on Qantas. Similarly, even though Qantas is close with AA, you'll still see them selling connections on United from their west coast gateways to several destinations.

Just because they dont have a partnership doesnt mean the interline agreement ends and they dont use it to help fill up their planes. Learn that.

@ Jason -- Not with Virgin Australia, at least aside from irregular operations:
“Qatar Airways will become Virgin Australia’s exclusive interline, codeshare and loyalty partner headquartered in the Middle East or Türkiye (excluding interline for passenger re-accommodation purposes).”

I think Qantas will interline with just about anyone. A sale is a sale, after all.

There is also more to it. Qantas is largely propped up by its protectionist Australian government. And Qatar Airways had a human rights violation incident against Australian women dating back a few years ago. The Australian government very much dislikes the country of Qatar (and thereby their government funded airline) since that matter didn't get resolved in favor of the Australian women.

Having flown Virgin Australia on a regular basis. I loved spending my points on etihad heading back to the uk and enjoying the lounge on the connection at Abu Dhabi ( maybe even more than the agreement with Singapore Airlines st the time )

They did but only back in the day

A lot of the changes with the likely buy-in by Qatar have me all over the place and really tilt the value proposition of gold status with VA. The present situation of partnerships but not alliances works well enough all around. I don't care much for the Etihad relationship, but the exclusivity demand has me seriously concerned with the value of travelling on Singapore (including Krisflyer transfers).
Functionally, Qatar digging deeper into Virgin doesn't have any real benefits for members and we can expect Golds and Platinums to continue being shoved into their shitty frequent flyer lounges at DOH like everyone else (at least the SIN gold lounge has some dignity). It's quite obvious this move into Virgin by Qatar is to "rub salt into the wound of Qantas" more than anything else, but it comes with serious collateral damage.
The Velocity changes next year to revenue based status are also such that anything above silver will ask for some effort on my part to maintain. I'll just travel less and buy cheap business class cash fares more often so status doesn't bring any benefits to me besides more points, but maybe that's what they want me to do...

The Qatar incident is just an excuse to limit Qatar airways growth at this point.