Virfin Australia has announced that it will be handing over Australia-Bali flights to its Low Cost subsidiary Tiger Airways. The expansion of Tiger into international routes was announced in a market update as part of the release of Virgin Australia’s full year results.
The new route will take effect from March 23, 2016, and will operate
- 5 daily services between Adelaide and Bali
- A daily service between Perth and Bali
- A daily service between Melbourne and Bali
At the same time, Virgin Australia will cease flying the above routes. Virgin will will continue to operate Bali services from Sydney, Brisbane and Port Hedland.
On the aircraft front, Tiger will be utilising three Boeing 737-800 instead of its usual A320 equipment.These aircraft will be sourced from Virgin and will be reconfigured and rebranded prior to entering the Tiger fleet. As part of the reconfiguaration, it is reported that 5 rows will be avaiable for sale as extra legroom seats. These will be the 2 exit rows, and the first three rows in the all economy cabin.
Velocity Members
An interesting feature of the announcement, is that for the first time Velocity members will be able to use their points to redeem flights on the Tiger operated Bali flights. While the facility will not expand to the rest of the operations, it is, as far as I know, the first time there has been any relationship between Velocity and Tiger Airways,
Other changes
As part of the changes, Virgin also announced that it was withdrawing the Perth to Phuket service. This withdrawal of the Phuket service means that Virgin has pretty much wound down its international operations out of Perth, The final Perth-Phuket flight will be on January 31, 2016.
On the flipside, there are a number of increased services to New Zealand to be operated by Virgin. This includes the Sydney-Christchurch route gaining an increase of two services per week from October 25 2015, while Melbourne-Christchurch gains an extra service from November 6 2015.
Virgin have also announced some additional seasonal services. These are as follows:
- Sydney-Christchurch: two return services per week year-round from 25 October 2015
- Melbourne-Christchurch: one return service per week year-round from 6 November 2015
- Brisbane-Auckland: one return service per week between 26 October 2015 and 13 December 2015, two return services per week between 14 December 2015 and 24 January 2016, and one return service per week between 29 February 2016 and 27 March 2016
- Brisbane-Dunedin: one service per week from 18 December 2015 to 22 January 2016
- Brisbane-Wellington: one service per week from 14 December 2015 to 24 January 2016
- Brisbane-Christchurch: one service per week from 14 December 2015 to 24 January
- Brisbane-Apia: one service per week from 16 December 2015 to 13 January 2016
- Brisbane-Honiara: one service per week from 22 June 2015 to 25 January 2016
- Brisbane-Nadi: one service per week between 12 December 2015 and 23 January 2016
