Virgin Australia is facing a pre-tax loss of $49 million for the 2014-2015 financial year, based on the latest quarterly numbers which the airline released today.
The airline filed a pre-tax loss of $211.7 million for the previous financial year, so the 2015 figures represent a substantial turn-around as Virgin Australia boosts its performance on the domestic market, enjoys a lower fuel bill due to reduced oil prices and works to constrain costs.
"The results represent a significant year on year improvement in performance for the seasonally weaker June quarter and we expect to see a continued positive trajectory" Virgin Australia CFO Sankar Narayan said in a statement.
Qantas is tipped to showcase an even more dramatic recovery later this month, with the Red Roo soaring back in the black, driven largely by an extensive cost-cutting and 'transformation' program applied to the susbtantially larger airline.
The Flying Kangaroo is expected to flag an underlying pre-tax profit close to $1 billion for the same period when the airline opens its books on the 2015 financial year on August 20.
Virgin Australia's low-cost arm Tigerair Australia is also looking healthier, with pre-tax losses trimmed to just $9.8 million in the March-April 2015 quarter against $25.8 million this time last year.
Virgin Australia is expected to soon hand some of its flights to price-sensitive leisure-oriented destinations such as Bali, Fiji and Phuket over to Tigerair, in what would be the first international flights for Virgin's low-cost arm.
Virgin Australia CEO John Borghetti will report on the airline's 2014-2015 financial year performance on August 7.
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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.
American Airlines - AAdvantage
13 Jul 2015
Total posts 274
"Virgin Australia is expected to soon hand some of its flights to price-sensitive leisure-oriented destinations such as Bali, Fiji and Phuket over to Tigerair, in what would be the first international flights for Virgin's low-cost arm."
Excuse the ignorance, but don't Tiger already fly to places like Indonesia and Singapore already? I swear I saw a Tigerair plane in KL recently?
28 Oct 2011
Total posts 645
do your homework
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
30 May 2013
Total posts 383
Why be so rude? The comment says "Excuse the ignorance"... So many nasty one line snipes at people on this site from time to time. Let's just all be nice, OK?
12 Dec 2012
Total posts 1031
Tigerair (TR) is a Singapore based airline part owned by SQ.
SQ and TR started Tigerair Australia (TT) in 2007 before selling to VA last year.
You saw a TR plane at KUL. TT does not (yet) fly outside Australia.
TR and TT planes look the same in much the same way as JQ, 3K and GK planes look the same.
QFF Gold QC gold
26 Nov 2012
Total posts 56
John Borgetti sold the furniture to fund a price war hoping it would strengthen VA. He seems to he inadvertantly given Qantas management the excuse they were looking for to "reform" the Qantas group and cut back on staff.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
28 Apr 2012
Total posts 14
it is my understanding that A320 (like Tager has) cannot fly from East Coast of Australia to Bali with sufficent passengers to make it profitable
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
30 Mar 2015
Total posts 54
One thing VA could do to keep their DPS and HKT service alive would be to use better aircraft on the route, A 737 between SYD/MEL/BNE - DPS (which is a 6-7 hour flight) doesn't sound plesent and many passengers would prefer to fly on a much larger Garuda a330 for a similar price.
I would like to see Virgin order a few 787s or more a330s and fly them to SIN and HKG rather than DPS and HKT and put up some competition with QF and a few more 777s to fly to places like SFO, NRT and maybe even SYD - AUH - LHR.
Singapore Airlines - KrisFlyer
17 Nov 2014
Total posts 101
I speculate the first victim could be PER-HKT where this would could be axed.
Transferring passengers onto Singapore Airlines for this sector will only incur 1 -2 hours extra travel time but passengers will be able to experience wide body aircraft.
For DPS services, I wonder whether VA could use DRW as a hub to feed passengers across to the new route from major cities such as SYD/MEL where direct services between these can be axed, leaving Queensland service survives with TT.
I do agree VA needs to explore more international routes such as Hong Kong and Tokyo, as going via Changi is not sustainable and causes significant detour for many North Asian destinations.
Velocity Frequent Flyer is not attractive neither, especially international travel. If they don't improve by either joining Star Alliance or add more airlines into their portfolio, they will find it difficult to reach their target member base.
06 Jan 2015
Total posts 66
You may well be correct about the Per-Hkt flights, however about a month back when I was at Perth intl there seemed to be a lot of people boarding that flight, and friends of mine who recently travelled on it said their flight was almost full.
It's almost all leisure based travellers who enjoy the luxury of a direct flight and don't really care about widebodies, J class etc.
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