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A Virgin Australia 777-300ER will fly a multi-leg repatriation flight from Brisbane to Paris, via Auckland and Hong Kong, to help stranded passengers from different nations return home.
On Saturday, 11 April, VA9940 will depart from Brisbane at 8am and land in Auckland at 1pm, before adopting a new number of VA9015 and departing at 3pm. It will then land in Hong Kong for a refuel, before continuing on to Paris and arriving at 7:30am on Sunday morning.
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The same aircraft will leave Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport later that day as VA9941, before touching down in Hong Kong. This time, rather than simply refuel, it will become the VA16 repatriation flight, departing on the morning of Tuesday, 14 April for Brisbane.
Virgin Australia told Executive Traveller, “As a major Australian carrier we are pleased to support the government in getting Australians home and maintaining important freight links into the country. We’re also happy to help return others to their home countries.”
Australian Aviation previously reported that Qantas and Virgin would resume limited international flights to Australia from London, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Auckland after agreeing to a repatriation deal with the government.
The services, thought to be subsidised, will run over the next month and include freight capacity for imports and exports.
Both Qantas and Virgin Australia groups suspended all international flights from the end of March due to the coronavirus crisis.
Last week, an Air New Zealand 777-300 chartered by the German government to repatriate citizens departed Auckland bound for Frankfurt via Vancouver.
Gary
says:There are a large number of Australians stranded in Perth trying to get back to the Eastern States. There are no scheduled services to Adelaide and only one each day to Sydney and Melbourne. Charter flights from Perth would be gratefully appreciated.
Dave
says:Going by videos created by YouTuber aviation videographers based in Vancouver, Air New Zealand actually completed quite a number of German repatriation flights from both Auckland and Christchurch on stop-overs to Frankfurt. There were around 30,000 German nationals located around the country many working in the now almost defunct hospitality industry. At one stage on the morning of April 6th, no less than three AirNZ 777-300s were parked up at the gates together. It apparently was quite the sight for the Canadians.
These repatriation flights were undertaken along with Lufthansa operating 747s and A380s (which coincidentally later completed a very low departure directly over Auckland city center.
ian
says:govt should be paying Virgin to do all flights. Forget Qantas.