Etihad Airways chief executive James Hogan has revealed plans for a significant expansion of his Abu Dhabi-based airline’s presence in Australia, including A380 services to Sydney and Melbourne, new airport lounges, and plans to increase its stake in Virgin Australia to almost 20 per cent. Hogan outlined the plans at the CAPA Australia Pacific Aviation
Virgin Australia services experienced significant disruptions on Tuesday when an outage saw its new Sabre-based reservation systems go offline for about two hours. The outage, which also affected several other airlines using the Sabre system, resulted in significant flight delays as Virgin moved to manual check-in procedures. “Virgin Australia is working to reduce disruption to
Virgin Australia marked the delivery of its 100th Boeing 737 by flying 100 Starlight children on a special charter on the aircraft’s first passenger flight on Monday. “As Starlight’s official wish granting partner, we are delighted to use the arrival of our new aircraft to create a special experience for children who need it the
Aggressive competition in the domestic market, rising operating costs, restructuring costs and investments in Skywest and Tigerair have resulted in Virgin Australia expecting to post a loss after tax of up to $110 million for the 2012/13 financial year. In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, Virgin CEO John Borghetti said the company’s performance
Emirates has celebrated five years of A380 operations. In Emirates service the Airbus flagship has flown more than 18 million passengers since August 1 2008 when the airline operated its first scheduled A380 flight from Dubai to New York. Over the five years of operation, more than 35 million meals have been served during 20,000
Low-cost Malaysian carrier AirAsia X is to add Adelaide to its Australian network from October 30. The city becomes the airline’s fifth destination in Australia and will be operated four times a week using two-class A330s. Adelaide is the latest development in an aggressive Australian expansion for AirAsia X, having recently announced an increase in