Virgin starting CBR-SYD

[apacau]

8x daily from February on E170s. Bring on the competition!

[newsensation]

And what is Qantas/Qantaslink doing?????:ugh:

[Flyingblind]

About time they got back into this route, actually i don't care who flys the thing just get up there and give the incumbents a head kicking.

Trouble is, its the Fereral Government employees who demand FFPs and lounges and dislike travelling with any airline that cant offer them Free booze and food, ala Rex and old Virgin.

Good luck Jungle Jets and VB, yes i do have a vested interest as i am a non Government worker who sometimes has to travel to Sydney for private reasons and the cost Qlink charge is not worth it, so its a 3hr drive there and an overnight stay if I'm there too long.

So bring it on VB!

:D:D:D:D:D:D

[Oliver Klozof]

And what is Qantas/Qantaslink doing?????
They're no doubt wiping the hydraulic fluid off the 100's and devising a cunning plan to offset the effect of the competition by lowering staff terms and conditions.
Or, they're still deluding themselves into thinking Virgin aren't a threat, despite them taking the customers AND the pilots.
QantasLink. The spirit of being re-active.

[alangirvan]

Australian Government employees are not allowed to earn FFPs for official travel. Rex had lounges at CBR and at SYD airports, and people could get in by showing their Qantas Club Card.

It is not just Australian Government employees who fly between CBR and SYD. The flights into CBR at 8 am will have the Big Business people flying to meet the Australian Government, and the Lounge will only really be full at 5pm when those Business people are flying home to SYD. Morning out of CBR, the Australian Government employees sit in the lounge, eating their muesli and raisin toast and trying to understand the make-it-yourself coffee machine while they wait for the fog to lift.

[DJCCGuy]

Virgin to Canberra: we're back
Sonya Neufeld





Virgin Blue says it will use new Brazilian jets to resume flights between Canberra and Sydney in a bid to lure the lucrative public service market.
The low-cost carrier, along with Rex Airlines, culled its flights between the two cities in 2004, blaming Qantas's dominance of the government and corporate market, which it snapped up when Ansett folded in 2001.

The exodus left Qantas as the only airline flying between Canberra and Sydney, effectively seizing the estimated 900,000 passenger-flight Canberra market.

But Virgin Blue announced last night it was coming back, this time with 20 new Embraer jets, or E-jets, which it secured from Brazil in a deal worth more than $850 million.

It's the largest single trade deal Australia has ever struck with Brazil.

The announcement came as rival Qantas took a hit yesterday, having to ground seven of its Dash-8 Q400 series aircraft causing the cancellation of a Canberra-Brisbane service, stranding 66 passengers.

Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman Peter Gibson said that initially there had been a recommendation by the aircraft manufacturer, Bombardier, that operators of these aircraft inspect undercarriages.

This had come after a Q400 had caught fire in Denmark when landing gear collapsed.

After a further failure, in which a Scandinavian Airlines carrier skidded off a runway in Lithuania when its landing gear failed, the Canadian aviation regulator issued an air-worthiness directive which set out three sets of inspections on the landing gear.

Mr Gibson said the Australian authority had issued a similar directive yesterday which had caused the seven Qantas aircraft to be grounded.

Qantas group general manager regional airlines Narendra Kumar said one of those aircraft had been cleared and was operating normally.

Work on the remaining six would be completed so they could return to service as soon as possible.

The QantasLink Q400 fleet was relatively young, with the oldest having operated less than 5000 cycles.

The aircraft involved in the overseas incidents were older, each having accumulated more than 14,000 cycles.

QantasLink's Q400 aircraft operate services on the airline's regional network in Queensland and between Canberra-Sydney and Canberra-Brisbane.

Meanwhile, Virgin Blue said the new 78-and 140-seat jets would provide more capacity, make it easier to fly to new regions and give it flexibility to tailor specific routes in line with "peaks and troughs".

It also said the new jets would provide travellers with one of the most "technologically advanced, efficient and comfortable" jet aircraft in the world. Chief executive Brett Godfrey said it was all part of the budget airline's plan to win a bigger slice of the business and government market.

He described that market as a "gaping hole" in the company's routes, which it had struggled to fill.

"Sydney to Canberra is one of the nation's busiest routes and is the only one of the top ones that we don't fly," he said.

"That's because unlike the rest of Australia, which has a high-leisure component to the make-up of each plane, Sydney to Canberra is predominantly a business route and very few people use it for leisure purposes."

He said in the past, Canberra's politicians failed to give the airline support, instead choosing to fly Qantas, but he believed the frequency and capacity provided by the new jets would change that.

Virgin Blue plans to resume the Canberra to Sydney route with 108 flights a week and eight direct daily flights on weekdays.

The flights, to operate under the name, Capital Jet, are due to begin on February 4, 2008, to coincide with corporate and government travellers returning from the Christmas break.

Canberra Airport managing director Stephen Byron welcomed the airline's new jet services as well as its recently announced business class lounge, saying both would boost competition and sophistication in the Canberra market.

"It's a fantastic opportunity for the whole Canberra community as it will mean more competition, cheaper fares and more services in a jet aircraft," he said.

He said the E-jet, smaller than 737s, would increase frequency, which was what customers in the region were looking for.

"All of these things combined mean a very competitive product has arrived in Canberra," he said.

Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said as Canberra's closest capital city, Sydney provided a gateway for tourism into the region and a number of opportunities for local business.

The new route would benefit the ACT economy through greater access and increased capacity and serve the wider business and corporate sectors.

A spokeswoman for Mr Stanhope said, "The business-to-business relationship between Sydney and Canberra is important and continually growing."

She said the ACT Government welcomed the move as an initiative that would help integrate the two economies.

"Ease of business travel between Sydney and Canberra is important, particularly under low cost models provided by operators like Virgin Blue," she said.