A major announcement soon concerning Alliance Airlines and Virgin. Alliance will become part of VARA and many E190 and ATR runs to be flown by Alliance F100's and F50's. Whether major Alliance shareholders will finally sell and take the money is not known, but Virgin is cashed up from the share rights issue some time back, that can only be spent on growing the airline, not retiring debt. As a VA insider looking at the arrangement, it is probably a far better investment than the Skywest deal.
Plenty of experienced and current Fokker 100/70 crew in Cairns and Brisbane who work for an operator further north looking for a new job to.