
The rainbow livery has been added to the nine-year-old A320-200 VH-VFY, which returned to Jetstar’s domestic network on Wednesday after its repainting in the airline’s Melbourne engineering hangar.

The airline has selected the conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) version of the ALIA battery-electric aircraft for its fleet, with the first expected to be in service for cargo flights with NZ Post by 2026. Air New Zealand has a firm order for one ALIA, with options for an extra two and rights for a further 20.

Bonza has already axed all Gold Coast–Darwin flights for December, with the route to now launch on 2 January. Other Gold Coast routes, including Melbourne’s Avalon Airport and Cairns, have been delayed indefinitely while CASA’s approval process continues for its wet-lease agreement with Flair.

The TWU’s ballot saw 99 per cent of participating cabin staff vote in favour of 24-hour work stoppages, while an average of 98 per cent voted in favour across all possible actions including shorter stoppages and overtime bans. In total, 90 per cent of Virgin cabin staff participated.

The plane took off at 3:28pm local time on 30 November from Airbus’ production facility in Mirabel, Canada, where pilots completed both low- and high-altitude checks of its electrical, navigation and comms systems before touching down again at 6:22pm.

Flight ZL379 on board the 737-800 VH-REX, which was due to arrive in Sydney at 9:05pm on Saturday, was rerouted to Canberra due to severe weather and touched down at 10:04pm before waiting on the apron until 10:40pm due to a gate reassignment.