Every airline is dealing with reduced demand in a different way, and Virgin Australia has just revealed how they plan on adjusting capacity. Virgin Australia has announced that they plan to suspend all international flights, and also ground their wide body fleet. Virgin Australia will: Suspend all international flights from March 30 through June 14,…
Continue reading: Virgin Australia Cuts International Flights, Grounds All 777s & A330s
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Rumour (from good sources) is that Qantas will be doing the same. Hence the DFAT advice to Australians to get home ASAP.
The federal government allocated $716 million in bailout funds to the Australia aviation industry (virgin, Qantas, REx, airports etc) this morning.
It looks like Virgin has enough cash on hand to weather this and if not the government looks like they'd bail them out.
As a platinum VA member I have always enjoyed the service however I think this is going to be a big impact and we will see VA looking very different afterwards as a result
Qantas has just extended current Premium Frequent Flyer status to members for an additional year, even though a member hasn't earnt sufficient Status Credits or minimum flight requirements.
I'm not entirely confident that Virgin Australia will weather this storm, without some dramatic change in strategy. If their major shareholders don't stump up some capital, then they are at severe risk. Call me a naysayer, but I lived through the disappearance of Ansett, and consequent loss of Frequent Flyer points, so I have moved my Velocity points over to Singapore Airlines as a precaution.