Digitalis: SRB is a marketing and deals man, and he's bloody good at it. He is not an airline manager, and is a bit hazy on the details sometimes! Nevertheless, his commercial instincts are pretty sound. Australia was certainly a long term aim of both him and the company, and there was no way that it was going to be achievable via any other station. It took Virgin long enough to get 5th freedom rights through HKG; it would have been impossible through any of the other ports mentioned earlier. ... The DXB service is very unlikely to be extended to Oz at this stage, but there is some talk of a service via PVG to either SYD or Melbourne. How serious this is, I can't say as yet.
There's an interesting article in the
Sydney Morning Herald:-
Virgin struggles on air route
By Andrew Clark
August 15, 2005
Virgin Atlantic's high-profile effort to crack the Australian market is proving a struggle for the British airline, which has admitted it is carrying poor loads and running up bigger losses than it expected.
Sir Richard Branson's carrier began flying the so-called kangaroo route from London to Sydney, via Hong Kong, in December. The airline pledged to shatter what it described as the "duopoly" held by Qantas and British Airways.
However, senior Virgin executives are increasingly concerned at the route's poor performance. ...
The article goes on to talk about a possible code-share deal with SQ via SIN (later denied - see
news.com.au) and gives load factor figures of 33% inbound to SYD and 36% outbound in April, rising to 70% inbound and 50% outbound "over the winter" aided by a 2-for-1 offer.
So I suspect we haven't heard the last of this story yet, by a long shot.