V Australia will take over this route
Maybe not this year (def not 2008) maybe in 2009 but certainly by 2010.
WHY?
Well as part of the agreement with the Aust Govt, VS can only uplift 66% of its load as paying pax. So the rest of the plane is frequent flyers (and anyone who studies the number of points needed will have noticed that VS flights ex syd are very very reasonable), to competition winners and lots of industry tickets.
So it makes total sense as an Aust owned airline - there would be no load restrictions to fly SYD- HKG - and code share on VS.
It amazes me that V Australia did not use the Virgin name somewhere in the brand - as the brand is everything when it comes to marketing.
Len