That's why they consistently have sales to Japan. In fact there's one right now 2.7k Return in J from SYD for May, Jun and August.
Can you give me an example to illustrate this fare? Best I can find, even looking 12 months out, is around $4k OW ex MEL. Even an Economy seat is A$800-1000 depending on flights.
Too many eggs in one basket maybe? In the SYD-HND route you have 1x JL 2x QF 2x NH. Given the strong marketing power of QF in Australia and the market is made up of mostly Australian originating travelers you’d think it would be silly to compete head to head with the QF/JL alliance.
As of right now VH-8IB is still stuck at HND. Probably scheduled to operate tonight’s VA78 back to CNS.
A bit OT but NH doing double daily isn't too strange, they never tested it precovid - it was supposed to start Mar 2020. They probably had very very good load factors pre 2020 as only QF (744) and NH (789) were flying into HND with 1 flight each. JL flew into NRT and all other cities were NRT as well. Post covid they now have to compete with JL directly now for HND. I'd also hazard a guess that they don't necessarily want to give up their SYD slot.
What are people thinking now about the VA HND slot after Bain divest (at least part of) it?
ANA on sale is the cheapest out of the 3 (NH, JL , QF) full service that fly. ~800 return from SYD for Y and 2700 for J. See above for why I think they're maintaining SYD for now.
The NH route network remains a shell of its former self, notable omissions:
I think Virgin has made it clear that wide bodies are off the table for a while. There is additional capital expenses associated with acquiring the airplane plus the need to start another airline Virgin Australia (Widebody) to handle pilots, maintenance, etc. Certainly not something you want to do when you are poised for an exit on to the markets.
Presumably the QAL cartel wants to put the squeeze on NH here. They currently have a limited route network due to them not flying into many major Star Alliance hubs in Europe and this excess capacity will do no favours for pricing.
ICN and TPE are voluntary omissions. GMP and TSA not only have great O&D but also funnel the HND hub. BR and OZ are partners but it isn’t a JV a butts in NH seats generate the most revenue and these routes generate the highest yield.
I did say TYO-MEL...not the other way around. It's readily available and has been for quite some time.
The PER sector is only 3 days a week..maybe going higher? Costs are 9K plus in biz.
I don't think they would, the old VA International entity continues to exist and is used in the same way it was pre-administration. There's no regulatory reason why they'd need to create another entity for a new aircraft type.
There are a couple of downsides that come to mind, one of which is connecting at SIN, many might prefer the non-stop connection. Also depending on who you are crediting the flights with it may be advantageous to take Virgin over say SQ. For instance, Singapore airlines isn't considered a preferred (despite them being part of Star Alliance) and they only earn up to 125% mileage in business whereas Virgin earns up to 200% and as a preferred partner it means PQPs are only divided by 5 (instead of 6). Hence if you are looking to accrue status on United Virgin would be the better option.
if I may ask, how do you get to Japan? Presumably it must be on points as a classic award, no?
Perhaps a "value" for future owners. Hypothetically, say SIA (or another big airline) becomes majority shareholder in VA in the future, they could put that to use AND have widebodies to possibly make it work.
I think largely the network works perfectly well with just narrow bodies. But I think there’s still place for a small fleet of small WB (5x 787-8/9 would be perfect I think).
VA would have no problem filling these 787s on domestic trunk routes (QF regularly runs A330s domestically as well).
