Adam Thorn

The route is the Vietnamese budget airline’s first from the Victorian capital and will take capacity to the Southeast Asian country to 150 per cent of pre-COVID levels.

Virgin Orbit’s CEO, Dan Hart, said his team would work “tirelessly” to understand the nature of the fault and make corrections for future attempts.

It comes after Virgin claimed to have hit real profitability for the first time since its damaging ‘capacity wars’ battle with Qantas and following the national carrier itself targeting an underlying profit before tax of up to $1.45 billion for the first half of the current financial year.

The former US marine pilot at the centre of claims military aviators had been training the Chinese has been unfairly singled out for political gain, argued his lawyer on Tuesday.

The mission had appeared to go to plan, but an as-yet unexplained problem appears to have occurred after the rocket was dropped from the aircraft.

According to an ASX statement, DroneShield’s order requires “relevant export approvals”, with deliveries of the most recent purchase expected to be completed by mid-2023.