Virgin Australia chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka says she’s prepared to wear the financial pain of ultra low airfares of $39 between key destinations like Sydney and Melbourne for an extended period to ensure passenger volumes rebuild.
“The pain of it for the first two or three, to get the next twenty-five, you know it works,” she said at a hotels conference in Adelaide on Thursday.
“We need to get the volume back in the industry,” she said.
Virgin CEO Jayne Hrdlicka with the backdrop of Adelaide Oval. Ben Searcy
“Whatever the price it’s going to take to get people back in the air that’s what we’re going to support for a while,” she told the AHICE conference.
But there would be a point where those extremely low fares ended, and fares costing $79, $99 or $115 became more prevalent.