V Australia announces Melbourne-Los Angeles, Sydney-Johannesburg routes

V Australia, the long-haul international airline owned by Virgin Blue Holdings Limited, has announced two new routes – between Melbourne in Australia and Los Angeles in the United States from September 15, 2009, and between Sydney in Australia to Johannesburg in South Africa from a date yet to be decided.

V Australia, headquartered in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, had already said it would fly between Sydney and Los Angeles from February 27, 2009, and between Brisbane and Los Angeles from April 8, 2009.

Till now, Qantas Airways, the flag-carrier airline of Australia, and the United States-based United Airlines had dominated the Australia-United States route.

In a statement, V Australia said the airline was offering Australian $1,100 all-inclusive return fares for Australians travelling to the United States.

On the new flights to Melbourne from Los Angeles, V Australia said it would provide an extra 1,080 seats for visitors each week. The new direct flight offers “great flexibility for tourists, particularly Victorians travelling to Los Angeles not needing to have to hub through Sydney.”

The airline also said it intended to offer “an attractive alternative” to over 200,000 seats on indirect routes to the United States via hubs in countries such as Japan, New Zealand and Korea.

The Australian media quoted Brett Godfrey, CEO and co-founder of Virgin Blue Group, as commenting in a press release: “We know that this is something people have been crying out for on both sides of the Pacific. Even in these tough economic times, passenger traffic through Melbourne has been continuing to grow.”

Meanwhile, the first Boeing 777 aircraft of V Australia landed at Sydney Airport on February 9, 2009, which the airline described as “marking the launch of a new homegrown international carrier on the trans-Pacific route between Australia and the US west coast.”

According to aviation analysts, the arrival of the Boeing 777 is likely to trigger a price war on tickets to Los Angeles with V Australia on the one side and Qantas Airways, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines on the other.

The website theaustralian.news.com reported that Richard Branson, chairman of the Virgin Group, attended the handover ceremony of the Boeing 777 aircraft held in the Boeing Company’s headquarters in Seattle, the United States.

V Australia took delivery of its first Boeing 777 jet three months later than expected owing to strike by employees at the Boeing factory in Seattle.

The airline plans to get 7 Boeing 777-300ER jets, which are built in the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington, the United States.

In the statement, V Australia said would it would break even in 18 months and that the airline expected bookings to go up “once word got about the Boeing 777 aircraft’s features and fares.”

V Australia said its new Boeing 777 plane would carry 360 passengers in a three-class configuration: business class with lie-flat seats, premium economy class, and economy class. The plane has two in-flight bars, latest in-flight entertainment systems from Panasonic, in addition to “mood lighting” throughout the cabin.