Jake Nelson

B-LRJ, decked out in the 1970s-1990s livery to mark the airline’s 80th anniversary, arrived in Sydney at 7am on Wednesday, operating flight CX111 from Hong Kong.

The carrier, which placed second in the Asia-Pacific for on-time arrivals in 2025, last year introduced a new system for its regional operations, saying it involved “rethinking how schedules are built to better reflect the realities of operating at different airports across the country”.

The trial, initially slated to finish at the end of January, will instead be extended to 30 June, with the airline reportedly seeing strong bookings as well as positive feedback from both customers and staff. More than 300 pets flew in the cabin on Virgin flights over the Christmas and New Year period alone.

The planemaker has a total order book of 8,754 commercial aircraft at year-end, with 1,000 new gross orders over the course of the calendar year. A total of 793 Airbus planes were delivered to 91 airline customers around the world in 2025.

Both domestic and international travel were up on 2024, with domestic increasing by 4.9 per cent and international by 6.5 per cent, for a total increase of 5.4 per cent year-on-year. A record high of 5,596 international flights operated in or out of the airport, carrying 1,222,570 passengers.

Several flights on Tuesday morning were delayed, including Qantas, Korean Airlines and Singapore Airlines services, and hundreds of passengers were moved outside in a “precautionary evacuation” after smoke from the air conditioning unit tripped fire alarms.