Most frequent flyers will agree that Virgin Australia now offers an excellent short-haul Business Class product on its Boeing 737. Unfortunately, it’s much less competitive on longer routes – especially international flights where lounge access is not even offered.
When flying with Virgin Australia from Brisbane to Sydney, for example, you can look forward to the lounge, pre-departure sparkling wine, a nice meal on board and great service. For the short flight, the reclining Business Class seat is perfectly comfortable and spacious.
If you fly Virgin Australia Business Class from Brisbane to Perth – a route of over five hours – you also get all of those things. But, apart from an extra dessert item on your meal tray, you don’t really get much more. (Granted, Virgin does offer free snacks from its Business Class pantry menu on request.)
And if you happen to end up on a red-eye flight, such as from Perth to Sydney, the reclining Business Class seat is no longer so appealing when you could be flying in a lie-flat bed on Qantas’ Airbus A330. Virgin Australia doesn’t offer pillows or blankets in Business, either.
Virgin Australia used to compete with Qantas by offering an excellent lie-flat Business Class seat on its Airbus A330s, which were used on routes to Perth, Hong Kong and occasionally to Fiji. But Virgin no longer has any wide-body jets in its fleet.
If you fly in Virgin Australia Business Class from Brisbane to Bali or Fiji, you still get the same meal that you would have got on a short Brisbane-Sydney hop – plus a dessert. But there is currently no lounge access available before departure when flying internationally with Virgin. So, in a way, you actually get less when flying overseas than you would on some domestic flights.
On longer routes, the lack of personal in-flight entertainment screen on Virgin Australia’s aircraft might also start to become a bit more noticeable. At least you can watch a movie on your phone or laptop, and there are charging outlets at the seat – but most other airlines do offer seat-back entertainment on longer flights.
In short, Virgin’s Boeing 737 Business Class product is highly competitive for short-haul flights. But other airlines generally provide a better experience on trans-continental and international routes where larger aircraft are used and lounge access is offered.
In June, Virgin Australia will begin flying Boeing 737-8 MAX jets from Cairns to Tokyo – a flight of over seven hours. We don’t yet know for sure how Virgin will configure its Boeing 737 MAX, but at this stage it appears there will just be 8 reclining Business Class seats.
With no lounge access provided in Cairns or Tokyo either, it’s basically just a similar product to what you’d get in Premium Economy on other airlines. (Except that Japan Airlines and ANA do actually offer lounge access to their Premium Economy passengers!)
Virgin Australia Business Class is still a more comfortable way to fly than Economy Class, regardless of the route length. But on longer domestic and international routes, other airlines are arguably offering more competitive Business Class products.
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