Jake Nelson

More than 1.31 million international seats will be available to and from Melbourne this month, which represents 101 per cent of the 1.29 million seats available in December 2019. The news comes as Aircalin resumes services between Melbourne and New Caledonia after more than three years.

Flight VN791 arrived in Perth late Thursday night on board the 274-seat 787-9 Dreamliner VN-A865, and returned to Ho Chi Minh City shortly after midnight as VN790. The service, first announced in September, will operate three times per week.

The cyclone is expected to make landfall on Wednesday, with the BoM predicting it to hit between Cape Flattery and Cardwell. Damaging winds are expected in the Cairns region starting on Tuesday, potentially extending as far as Townsville or Cape Melville.

Using an A350-900 aircraft, the SQ265/266 service will operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, adding to SIA’s existing three daily flights between Brisbane and Singapore and bringing its total weekly return Brisbane flights to 25. It follows a successful seasonal service this year.

The carrier will begin ramping up its NZ services on 31 March, increasing frequency on popular domestic and international routes. It expects to reach 100 per cent of pre-pandemic domestic capacity by the middle of next year, with trans-Tasman routes almost 40 per cent higher than 2019 levels.

The plane, which has been painstakingly restored by the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) over the past 12 years, took off shortly after 10:30am at Shellharbour Airport and flew for roughly 15 minutes before making a successful landing.