Yes, VA is a "career" airline these days, assuming it keeps going which given the free spending ways of certain individuals isn't necessarily a given.
There were quite a few years where people joined and found themselves in command of a 737 in under 6-12 months. Unheard of in Australia previously and you would have to say unusual in the rest of the world (for non contract roles).
All the stuff with the Chinese could very well kick off a flurry of new wide body routes, and given that there are only 11 existing wide bodies in the group at the moment there could be a few more airframes in the future, with that brings opportunity.
If you are flogging around in a GA type, a dash or even to a lesser extent a 717 you would, I would suggest, have to have a serious think about whether the inconvenience of the early stages of the job in Virgin outweighs the later stages.
If you were offered QF and VA at the same time, I would probably go with QF but you are faced with the same issues - SO for a considerable time, then uncertainty as to where the progression lies given JQ etc. but if nothing else you get half decent staff travel and "appear" to be valued at least a little bit by the senior management.
VA - gives you a number of different pathways. Let's face it FO on the 737 in NZ isn't exactly flying rubber dog **** out of Hong Kong. NZ is a beautiful country, the flying across the pacific islands is good challenging flying and if you have kids bring them up in nz is not a bad option, flattened vowels notwithstanding
Flogging around to LA or AUH in the back seat of a trippler, granted not as mentally stimulating as it could be but it is what you make of it, no reason why you couldn't fill your time doing some tertiary education by remote learning, if nothing else do some shopping in LA!
The SO's seem to transition into the right hand seat of the domestic jets reasonably fast, certainly faster than QF as best I can tell, so that may be a consideration.
Would I give up a decent dash8 or 717/146 gig for this - I would certainly give it some serious thought!
Cobham for all their good points, are hostage to their contracts, that is just the nature of the beast. You could do an absolutely awesome job with them and the political winds blow differently at QF or wherever and they lose the contract (look at santos as an example). Through absolutely no fault of your own you could find yourself looking for something else - the other flick of the coin says they keep their contracts and you could stay there happy as larry until you retire - you just don't know.
Eastern/sunnies/skippers etc - probably worth serious consideration. As the Rex guys have found out the lower paid but more relaxed regional lifestyle can change when some bean counter decides to squeeze a few more drops from the regional lemon, and you are doing a heap of overnights with little or no allowances, effectively away nearly as much as the mainline pilots for half the pay.
You just don't know, but don't dismiss future opportunities because the initial bits are not ideal.