Year: 2026

The flight is scheduled for no earlier than late February, launching aboard Rocket Lab’s “That’s Not A Knife” mission from Launch Complex 2 at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, operated by the Virginia Spaceport Authority. Final launch timing will be confirmed within 24 hours of the window opening.

Velocity Frequent Flyer chief executive and VARA group executive, Nick Rohrlach, and chief strategy and transformation officer, Alistair Hartley, will depart Virgin Australia as of 30 April. Rohrlach will be replaced by hotel executive and former Qantas senior manager Andrew Cleary.

The EC-135 training helicopter conducted a “series of passes and manoeuvres” near the 45-metre digital aerodrome service mast at WSI on Thursday to help calibrate and validate the camera feeds, said Airservices.

Around 47,000 more passengers transited the airport in the 2025 holiday peak than in 2024, with 600,000 in December and a further 637,000 in January. It comes as airlines including Qantas, Jetstar, and Fiji Airways look to ramp up services from the Gold Coast.

Featuring several hundred metres of new conveyor belts, alongside Rapiscan CT screening technology, higher throughput, and updated infrastructure to “minimise operational disruptions and downtime”, construction on the facility began in May last year and took seven months to complete.

The Flying Kangaroo arrived at the gate within 15 minutes of schedule 83.32 per cent of the time last month, OAG said, behind China Southern in first place at 89.4 per cent, and Hainan Airlines in second place at 87.92 per cent. Out of a total of 22,676 Qantas flights, 2.18 per cent were cancelled.