V Australia BNE Base

[ilana182]

I've heard from Virgin Blue employees that there are rumours that VA will be eventually opening a base in BNE. Does anyone have any more information about this?

[leahmarie]

ill ask my sister when she gets home she works for vb at gc airport

[ANstar]

No plans yet - they will only have 6 weekly flights EX BNE soon so hardly enough to justify.

SYD will be getting more flights with the recent announcement that they are pulling out of Jburg and Phuket.

[Crew rest.]

Pulling out of HKT means only 3 flights/week ex BNE. Not much chance of a base, I 'd say..

[ilana182]

How did you go leahmarie?

[vacc1]

OOL ground staff are aerocare contractors so would know no more then anyone else here.

I am VA crew, as much as most of us wish a BNE base would occur it's now more unlikely then ever - from Feb BNE departures go to only 3 per week and even in March 2012 when they pick up to 6 a week - that's only 1 more then now. To make the base viable they need more then that.

The only other thing to add is that a significent amount of VA crew (including almost all the FM's and a large number of CL's) reside in SEQ - if/when a base is announced they would no doubt be able to fill it internally and still have a very large transfer list to action.

If you want to fly for VA don't let the SYD base put you off - depending who you believe in management between 30% & 50% of our crew commute (a majority from either SEQ or MEL) and it works for all of us. More crew seem to be moving back home to cities out of SYD and now commute all the time.

[ilana182]

thanks so much for your reply vacc1 ... i must admit i didn't apply for SYD cos i was scared of commuting even though i've heard alot have ... do you know when they might recruit for SYD again?

[I Just Want To Fly]

Management has said that they have a large pool waiting for start dates, and an even larger pool waiting for interview dates. It is unlikely that applications will open up any time soon.

[vacc1]

As the above poster said external recruitment in the near future is very unlikely. A lot of people are on hold, internal recruitment is still occuring and the schedue changes actually result in a loss of flying for VA in the short/medium term (By Feb 2011 a decrease from the current 22 departures a week to 15 - increasing to 18 in Mar 2012) and then who knows if/when the other ordered a/c arrive.

Unfortunately you may have msised the boat for VA for the short team at least.