Qatar Airways to acquire 25% of Virgin Australia

[Harrison_133]

Wonder if they could possibly end up in VA colours.

American Airlines Abandoned Their Airbus A330s – Now Qatar Airways May Give Them New Life - View from the Wing

Even though the Airbus A330-200s were parked four and a half years ago, that fleet is still only about 13 years old on average. It was larger in quantity and newer than the 9 orphan -300s which were certainly on the way out, even without the pandemic. These planes were ex-US Airways, from...

viewfromthewing.com

The A330s won't have the range for Doha - Australia.

 

[HS-TQE]

More likely I'd be tipping that QR will use the A330s for regional ops, freeing up the 77Ws required for the wetlease VA ops.

 

[justinbrett]

That's a shocking excuse that could be used in any situation.

We're flying somewhere else new so we'll wet lease with foreign workforce back over there.

C'mon mate, severely locked those blinkers on haven't you.

Shocking? Really? A bit precious, don’t you think?

Lots of major airlines wet lease to fill temporary shortfalls in their capacity - NZ, BA, even QR!

We all know the VA deal is about increasing QR capacity. I mean, VA literally called it Project Doubles. They’re not even trying to hide it. If it was for a new route like SYD-LAX maybe, but let’s call this for what it is.

 

[justinbrett]

I assume you're NOT trying to argue that QF should be allowed to wet lease because they're bigger than VA!


I'd also "imagine" that VA would have liked to go dry lease from day 1 -- if it could. Why would either QF or VA choose wet leasing as their first option? They're only doing it because they have the choice between wet leasing or not flying the route at all.

I guess I am. Wet leasing a small percentage of long haul services for three years before a confirmed switch to a dry lease, is quite different to wet leasing 100% of your long haul services, from an airline flying to its hub that you have a JV with, that tried to increase its capacity but was blocked by the government.

Perhaps if QF was wet leasing AY to fly PER-HEL after AY was denied capacity, we might have a closer analogy. But there’s no chance in HEL AY would be flying SIN/BKK-SYD without QF wet leasing.

I don’t think VA wants the risk of dry leasing from day 1.