Virgin Australia Mk II: "everything is on the table"

If domestic travel takes a long time to come back, Qantas aren't going to be using too many A330s on east-west routes either.

Vaughan also made the below comment. Let's hope all/as many as possible at Virgin Australia can keep their jobs.

Administrator Vaughan Strawbridge said the airline doesn't plan to make any of its 10,000 staff redundant as the company looks for a new owner.

At a press conference today, Mr Strawbridge said employees who were still employed would continue to receive their wages, and those who are stood down would continue to get the jobkeeper allowance.

“Hopefully we can maintain all the jobs, or as many as possible, through this process,” he said.

Or the other way to look at the 330, is the administrator has the authority to “re” negotiate the 330 leases to advantageous rates in the current global pandemic market and on relaunch turn a fantastic hard product and fleet into a strong financial contributor to the airline group. All this whilst maintaining a widebody suite in the TCP market and keeping FF happy. Makes scene, chance now to get the leases at the cheapest possible rate. Otherwise what will the lease company do with them in current market.

I'm currently VFF Platinum, but if Virgin reduces or abandons flights to USA I'll need to fly Qantas and that will be for all my business (domestic, LHR and USA). I sure hope Deloitte 'grow a pair's and go hard on aircraft lessons and other debt financiers. If their only experience in to beat up scared employees, they'll fail in their mission.

Based upon the Adsett collapse, it seems Administrators dont like to take advice. So I'll phrase this delicately. As at today, the Administrators have a far more loyal and financially lucrative customer base than a clothing chain or department store. Be VERY careful not to abuse it or take it for granted. :-)

I'll trade an A330 for a waffle iron, if anyone is interested?

Anyone hoping for Long Haul International to be maintained is delusional.

It has been the noose around VA's neck and main cause for it being in it's current predicament.

I feel business flying will change dramatically in the near future; virgin's extra leg room X product will definitely appear attractive to business, and maybe a PE product replacing J on trans continental and NZ routes, remembering that Companies will be facing financial problems as well. Can't see VA domestic as a full service identity in the near future.

I recall flying to Sydney for a Virgin Blue (as it was then) press conference. I was initially disappointed to be seated in the back row, until CEO Brett Godfrey sat down next to me, clutching his take-away meal, bought in the departure lounge before boarding.

That image is a world away from his successor, John Borghetti. And in many ways, the airline that has now collapsed is as far removed from the vision mapped out by Godfrey on a drinks coaster in the pub.

Every time I swipe my Velocity card to enter a Virgin Lounge, I'm reminded of Godfrey's insistence that there will “never be lounges, nor a frequent flyer programme nor business class”.

As a no-frills airline, Virgin Blue was very successful. It ran profitable services on popular routes with cheap fares.

Clearly, the fledgling airline soon had the lucrative (or so it seemed) corporate market in its sights – and to some extent, that explains its current woes.

Initially, in the post-9/11 era, Virgin had some success in a corporate market fixated on cost control and “best fare of the day”. Back then, lounges and rewards were “nice to have”, but low fares were essential, and Virgin locked in some heavy-weight Queensland business clients. In the early 2000s, it even secured a chunk of business from the Queensland government.

As a business travel writer, I watched Godfrey “walk back” his three promises one by one. First, the Blue Room lounges started rolling out in facilities previously occupied by Ansett. Then we witnessed the conversion of the front three rows of the aircraft into pseudo-business class seats, and finally, Velocity was launched.

Over the first decade, Virgin Blue had come so far from its original incarnation and so close to its rival, Qantas, that it had to appoint a Qantas executive to its helm and rebrand.

If the last decade has shown anything, it is how hard it can be to mimic Australia's de facto flag carrier, especially when you start with a model so different.

Of course, the current Coronavirus lock-down was the last straw, but let's not forget that Virgin has been bathed in red ink for eight of the last 10 years.

I'm sure if Brett Godfrey and his team could find an open bar and some coasters to plot a revival today, they could do no worse than the original blueprint. And maybe that's what the administrators will recommend – stripping back the quasi-Qantas and getting back to basic Blue.

Rather sad, but in my experience they lost their way. I really tried to use Virgin, but the kept letting me down.

They NEED to join an Alliance. Sky Team or Star Alliance. OR they do the world by themselves, which is NOT Possible.

I had 2 issues.

1. The only way I could get from London to New York, was via Sydney. It appears they only had a small number of code shares with Delta ( Sky Team).

2. The cannot get me to Israel, as it appears EITHAD will not allow it.

3. They are 'linked to" Singapore Air ( Star Alliance) - but only on limited routes.

Thinking if they just had an Alliance they could rely on, their opportunities would have been many times more.

I think the VA Mk2 will be domestic carrier initially using a LCC/FSC business model similar to Air NZ, with the A330's going, the B777's being ground/mothballed until the trans Pacific travel re-starts. Once Australia and New Zealand sort out there COVID-19 travel bubble, then trans Tasman travel will be restarted. Since airline alliances are expensive, Singapore Airlines, Delta and possibility Eithad, Qatar and other interested airlines will negotiate deep co-share alliances for Australian domestic and trans Tasman markets.

I agree with what you say about overseas airlines being able to code share domestically on Virgin in Australia, However on the flip side I have a small business that sources and supplies across the globe. So that arrangement will not help me once I am out of Australia.

Forces me back to Qantas for overseas, and that means also for domestic to keep status etc.

OR Maybe I just Fly ( say Singapore) and then use their code share in Australia.

Interesting times ahead.

The Virgin brand is a relic of the 80's - you'd ditch it (and it's royalty fees) in a heartbeat if it wasn't for the cost of rebranding livery, collateral etc

I'm here to read all of the google accountants and google airline ceos opinions

Just because it worked 20 years ago and they adopted a new technique which went south, doesn't mean that that same technique or similar variants are going to work today. In my opinion, people are too quick to dismiss the new VA model because the previous one was "successful" 15+ years ago. Times change as we are no doubt all too familiar with and while the new VA model might not be the right one, I highly doubt the old model is the best way to go in these times of downturn and crisis. Call me an armchair CEO but the choice I would take is to downsize and run the tightest ship possible while still honouring the velocity program. This might be closing down VA int'l (depends on the fleet utilisation and slot times I should think, considering LF's have been rumoured to be quite high) or shedding the 73's on the indo-pacific routes. Or it might be (as brutal as this sounds esp in times like these but perhaps because of it) re-negging staff contracts and critically I think, the 330 leases which I believe Scurrah already had in mind (He might be the one to head the new airline, at the very least, as morale for the staff). Economy X from what I have heard is doing quite well, although I'm in two minds as to whether the business product is the option they would want to take due to competition with the much more stable and, in the future, much more convenient and available QF although the other option would be to lose corporate customers who I think they have a genuine customer base to work with and that might be worth retaining for at least the near future as they will be the money makers until leisure travel is brought back up to speed which I imagine will take a little while longer than the investors will be willing to count in on.