iscover
Virgin Australia has announced it will end its direct services between Los Angeles and Melbourne, and will increase its four services a week between LAX and Brisbane to a daily service.
The airline will cease its Melbourne services on October 25, and will start the daily Brisbane flight the next day.
This content is available exclusively to Australian Aviation members.
A monthly membership is only $5.99 or save with our annual plans.
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Unlimited access to all Australian Aviation digital content
- Access to the Australian Aviation app
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Access to our Behind the Lens photo galleries and other exclusive content
- Daily news updates via our email bulletin
- Unlimited access to all Australian Aviation digital content
- Access to the Australian Aviation app
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Access to our Behind the Lens photo galleries and other exclusive content
- Daily news updates via our email bulletin
“The changes announced today are a result of extensive market analysis,” said chief commercial officer, Judith Crompton. “Having the right frequency is very important to corporate and leisure customers and moving to daily flights from Brisbane enables us to provide more choice and flexibility to those travelling to and from Queensland.”
The airline will also make a minor change to the departure times of its services between Sydney and LA, bringing the Sydney departure time forward 25 minutes to 11:40am to give an 07:30am arrival time in LA, and pushing back the return service back to Sydney to 10.50pm, meaning a Virgin 777 will be on the ground in LA for more than 15 hours.
The airline says Melbourne passengers will be required to connect to or from LA flights through Sydney or Brisbane.
Ante C
says:That’s great news for Qantas and United.
John
says:I’d be really annoyed if I had a Virgin MEL/LAX ticket & now told I have to go via SYD, BNE or AKL.
UA announced MEL/LAX nonstop months ago. Why did it take VA so long ?
Kim
says:As an Adelaide traveller, I’l probably go in future with Air NZ -direct to Auckland and then San Francisco. Can’t stand LAX. Hope they have 787’s on the Auckland/SanFrancisco leg.
Trav
says:Yep John, that’s me. Calling Virgin shortly to cancel my 4x premium economy seats. Would rather go direct in cattle class with Qantas than have a stop over.
Greg Soper
says:Your joking ..15 hours on the tarmac ..Sounds like a waste of $$ to me ..
Adam
says:This is going to upset a lot of Melbourne travellers and rightly so…people unfortunately dont like doing stopovers when non stops are in place, especially families, travellers on bereavement travel, the time sensitive business traveller etc it is the conundrum of living in a country as big as Australia though…everyone wants a direct service to everywhere from wheveever they live…the Asian and gulf city states have that natural advantage in that they have a captive home market..I just hope that VA dont regret this decision…why not just invest in more 777s? How long have they been flying internationally…and they can not justify growth? Surely 5 777’s is not conducive to economies of scale!