Virgin Atlantic wants to fly London-Perth non-stop

Virgin are considering non stop flights to UK from the West Coast, but unlike QANTAS, they are considering Broome, as recently Broome has opened up as an International Airport, it currently serves Star Alliance Member SilkAir, who will soon be renamed SQ, Virgin Atlantic is also very interested in Non Stop Australia flights. Broome would make a better choice as a hub distributor to the rest of the country, as it would also serve as a tropical resort stopover replacing many southeast Asian stopover trips for many Australians headed for Europe, not to mention the Europeans visiting Australia with a stopover in Broome. Sure, infrastructure will need to be enhanced, but as these long haul flights are still only possible with 300 seaters, it shouldn't be that hard, Broome would grow to support A380 class aircraft as they became available. What do you think, would you fly say MEL or SYD to LHR thru Broome?

And what aircraft are Virgin purchasing to make this work?

They have 12 Airbus A350-1000's starting delivery in 2019....

Hi whoopersandwich, I believe they are looking at modifying their A330-200 with reduced load + no cargo as a trial, before switching or in addition to Virgin Atlantic 787-9.

There is no way that Virgin Atlantic would run a non-stop flight from London to Broome..no way. Firstly, they are an airline which s run on commercial grounds. As such, they will want a mixture of point-to-point traffic, along with transfer traffic as feeder to the service all in a mix of business and leisure traffic. The aircraft range is currently limited to the West coast of Australia, so they need additional feed from the east. Broome is a purely leisure destiination and will add traffic in sufficient number or yield, especially when there is poor frequency of feeder flights to the East, compared to somewhere like Perth.

Who said Virgin Australia wouldn't feed Virgin Atlantic? Of cause they would, just as Virgin Australia feed Etihad and SQ, in fact VA used it's metal on Etihad services between Asia and Abu Dhabi, so there is precedent.

Virgin Australia feeds Virgin Atlantic at Hong Kong from MEL and SYD, why wouldn't they get fed the rest of the country in BME, Don't forget they are a leasure Airline too.

LOL gonna need a source on this. There's barely a weekly flight from the east coast BME let alone a flight all the way from LHR

Broome doesn't make sense for Virgin to launch a route like this. If I'm going to have to connect to a domestic hop anyway, why don't I do it somewhere else like Perth or Hong Kong or Singapore? There wouldn't be enough direct demand for it too.

Seems fanciful, but then I wouldn't have picked Cairns or Newcastle as viable international stops either...

Did you just suggest we’ll see A380’s flying in and out of Broome? Wow. None of this will happen.