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Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia are adding extra flights between Auckland and Brisbane amid what the pair says is strong demand for travel across the Tasman.
Under the new schedule, the trans-Tasman alliance partners planned to have 34 flights a week on the Auckland-Brisbane route during the winter months, representing a capacity boost of about 10 per cent compared with the prior year.
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This included six return flights on some days of the week.
“Demand for trans-Tasman travel continues to be strong and it’s a market we’re focused on growing,” Air New Zealand chief revenue officer Cam Wallace said in a statement.
In addition extra flights scheduled for between April and October 2018, the two carriers said some services have been retimed to offer travellers more choice.
“Virgin Australia is pleased to see the growth in demand for these services and these network changes,” Virgin Australia group executive for airlines Rob Sharp said.
“Our alliance with Air New Zealand is committed to providing customers with flexible travel options to and from New Zealand and the updates to the flight schedule reflect this.”
The added flying from Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia from April will help add back some capacity on the route following the withdrawal of Emirates’ Airbus A380 flights between Brisbane and Auckland, as well as between Auckland and Melbourne.
Qantas is also boosting its Brisbane-Auckland offering through additional frequencies and the upgauging of some Boeing 737-800 flights to widebodied Airbus A330s.
KiwiBH
says:Never had a good experience flying trans tasman on Virgin, its a LCC operation that denigrates AirNZs’ global reputation. A view that is reflected in the comments of others who we’ve spoken to. (far too many indeed)
I would love to see Virgin succeed and give QANTAS some real competition but they continually fail to meet reasonable expectations of an airline that purports not to be an LCC.
Scott
says:Air NZ has no business class on their Narrow bodies and Virgin does and you claim it’s the LCC that makes no sense. The alliance feeds Air Nz with 24mil potential pax in oz, other end has 5mil. Air Nz customer base expanded 6 fold. Virgin offers lots to Air Nz.
Aviator 007
says:Have to agree with you KiwiBH not the best of experiences travelling on VA across the ditch as I feel NZ have a superior product if you buy the works
Eric C
says:An airline that promotes itself with an image of flight attendants tossing a flagon of bubbly across the heads of centre row passengers hasn’t quite left its bogan LCC roots behind..
FlySpy
says:Dear KiwiBH,
How do you think the VA service across the tasman can be improved?
Cheers.