Is V Australia about to officially announce LAX-SYD service at a press conference? That is the likeliest first route--or perhaps SFO-SYD--for the international arm of Australia's Virgin Blue Airlines.
We hear there's an "event" happening in Los Angeles this Monday, 3/31. Let's say this is the big shebang and we get an official ticket sale date and launch date (probably early fall '08) for LAX-SYD...will they give us cabin details? And more importantly, PRICING? Where do you think V Australia is going with these details?
We say: hopefully, as far as pricing goes, to the sub-$1000 (round-trip) sweet spot...sweet spot for flights between the U.S. and Australia, that is. Oh, the soothing lullaby of skies opening up...
Air travel in the Asia-Pacific region is non-stop action at the moment. With Asian LCCs forever threatening to expand and governments chipping away at open skies agreements, it almost feels like we'll be able to fly around Australasia for free in a couple of years.
The news this week is an agreement between the Australian and Malaysian governments to allow more seats on flights between the two countries. Until the announcement, the weekly traffic between Oz and Malaysia was around 35,000 seats, but there are now 5,000 more seats with another 3,500 seats allowed from March 2009.
The expansion is likely to encourage budget airlines like Air Asia X to start more routes to Australia and even compete on the domestic market--there are even rumors that they plan to cooperate with Virgin Blue. We are really hanging out for some cheap flights around this region, so watch this space.
Now that Australia and the United States have opened up competition on transpacific routes, V Australia needs some people to actually, you know, fly the planes.
The airline's ordered seven new 777s to fly its initial 10 weekly flights between LAX and Sydney, and it's searching for 280 flight attendants and 100 pilots to join the small team it's already hired. Flights are set to begin in November 2008.
Not content to let V Australia grab all the talent, Qantas hopes to hire 2,000 long-haul flight attendants in the next couple of years. The carrier is offering up a special bonus, too: the chance to work on an A380, which it hopes to have flying between Australia and the US by this summer.
The United States and Australia just finalized a deal to make flying between the two countries easier--and maybe cheaper. The Sydney-LAX route that's been in Qantas' back pocket for all these years will be open to competition, much to the thrill of V Australia, the Virgin Blue offshoot.
Of course not everyone's happy. Singapore Airlines got locked out of the newly open market because the agreement will only allow US and Aussie carriers access. (That was a move to keep the Australian flag carrier happy despite the increased competition it would face.)
Now that everything's official, it's time to start watching the newly open skies. Qantas is hoping to start A380 service on the route and has already announced plans to add more frequency. V Australia will fly 777s when it begins service. No other airlines have announced new transpacific routes, but it's possible we'll hear something soon. As long as it's from an American carrier, that is.
If you've ever flown direct from Los Angeles to Sydney, the chances are pretty high that you've been aboard a Qantas flight. The Aussie airline handles 80 percent of traffic on the route thanks to an agreement that restricts other airlines to four or fewer flights per week. But that might soon change, if talks between the US and Australian governments work out as predicted.
Qantas is finally letting other airlines onto its near-monopoly route--as long as a deal keeps close rival Singapore Airlines out of the game. The less scary Virgin Blue looks like the most likely newcomer. The carrier's long haul arm, V Australia, hopes to have 10 flights a week on the LA to Sydney route. Here's hoping V Australia can bring us V low prices.
It seems a bit early to start announcing awards like Best Low Cost Airline of the Year for 2008, but the Budgie Awards for LCCs were announced this week and Down Under's Virgin Blue, it seems, is the best of 'em all. As well as being a great airline to fly, late last year Virgin Blue was named the third most profitable airline in the world.
So what next for a successful, profitable airline? Well, for one, they're planning a long-haul version of Virgin Blue that will compete on the Australia-United States route, even though the CEO admitted such a route wouldn't be profitable "for at least 15 months."
Within Australia, Virgin Blue is introducing some new routes, such as a direct flight from Canberra to the far more exciting Gold Coast using Embraer jets. If you'd ever visited the political haven that is Australia's capital, you'd understand why the locals would be so thrilled to have a cheap direct link to the Gold Coast.
And over in the western half of Oz, Virgin Blue has recently signed a code-share deal with Skywest, opening up cheap connections to Western Australian towns like Kalgoorlie, Kununurra and the holiday paradise of Broome. The only down side to Virgin Blue's recent headlines is their decision to increase fuel surcharges, effective today. Luckily, it works out to only about $8 per ticket on a domestic route. In the LCC battle you have to take the bad with the good.
We've been so caught up following the new routes of Virgin America and Skybus that we haven't spent too much time looking abroad. But the latest news from down under is terrific for anyone who's ever gone bankrupt buying a transpacific plane ticket. Officials from the US and Australia will get together February 12-14 to talk about a potential open skies agreement like the one that's sparked competition over the Atlantic.
And who would be in prime position to benefit from such an agreement? Who else but Richard Branson, who's Virgin Blue spin-off, V Australia, hopes to break into the stagnant Australia-West Coast market. Only two players currently operate those flights, United and Qantas.
Also interested is Singapore Airlines, which would probably run flights through its hub at Changi Airport. In the past, it's been kept off the route by the Australians. But with a pro-competition government newly in charge, perhaps Singapore and others will be allowed to join in the fun. That'd be terrific for consumers and Australian tourism but terrible for Ralph Fiennes' favorite airline, Qantas.
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by djk
