Virgin Australia becomes single airline brand from January 1st, 2012
By David Flynn, June 7 2011
In brief: V Australia and Pacific Blue will all come under the Virgin Australia brand as of January 1st, 2012.
Virgin Australia CEO John Borghetti named the date for completion of his single-brand strategy at today's IATA 2011 conference in Singapore, and is clearly relishing the chance to tick another box off his 'Game Change' to-do list which has turned the low-cost Virgin Blue airline into a major challenger for Qantas and what is increasingly appearing to be a world-class operation.
Borghetti told Australian Business Traveller that today's announcement of the Singapore Airlines partnership completes his airline's "major alliance strategy", although that clearly leaves room for the anointment of smaller second-tier carriers to serve specific markets.
However, Borghetti specifically nixed suggestions that the tie-up with Singapore Airlines was at any time part of the discussions surrounding the use of the Virgin Australia brand (Singapore Airlines holds 49% of Virgin Atlantic, and as such has veto power over the use of the Virgin name in international aviation.)
Borghetti also said he no immediate plans to substantially boost the size of the Virgin Australia fleet. "We're very happy with our current fleet plan, we're not looking at increasing it."
"A lot of airlines have gone broke by having too much capacity, but I don't know anyone who's gone broke by having too little capacity" he observed. That said, he allowed that while the fleet currently includes five Airbus A330s, "three to five is a suboptimal number in the long run."
David Flynn is the Editor-in-Chief of Executive Traveller and a bit of a travel tragic with a weakness for good coffee, shopping and lychee martinis.
19 Feb 2011
Total posts 18
Ahh, excellent. I wonder if the Samoan government made any objection to this move at all, and whether they reached an agreement with some sort of transaction ...
24 Oct 2010
Total posts 2563
I had similar thoughts. Maybe J-Borg sweetened the deal with a bunch of free Velocity Platinum cards!
11 Jun 2011
Total posts 3
"V Australia and Pacific Blue will all come under the Virgin Australia brand as of January 1st, 2012."
Did I miss the Polynesian Blue part of the announcement?
24 Oct 2010
Total posts 2563
We were initially led to believe that Polynesian Blue would also adopt the new brand, and that was reflected in our story when it first went up - but a follow-up with Virgin Australia PR indicated this would not be the case, so PolyBlue and its fleet of one aircraft will remain under the PolyBlue brand.
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