The future of VARA?
 

The new owners of Virgin Australia, Bain, have stated that they only want to operate B737's into the future and possibly B787's further down the track. VARA, which has F100 and A320 jets is mainly confined to WA at the moment and like other charter operators, has been pretty well flat out during the pandemic. Qantas has been stopped from taking over Alliance, so I'm thinking that they couldn't buy VARA either, so the big question is, what happens to VARA? Is it sold off, broken up, liquidated or taken over by Alliance, Cobham or another operator?

Sold to Singaporean interests and rebranded as ‘SKYWEST’ 😁

Alliance would surely want to buy the Fokkers, but wouldn't be paying much. Would anyone else anywhere want old Fokkers ?

I hope there is still some employers around that want old Fokkers like me:E

The mining contracts are quite lucrative financially and will be for the foreseeable future.

Removing the entire cost layer of VARA and everything single thing associated with it, essentially shutting it down, and operating these routes with Mainline 737s, would still be quite a highly profitable operation.

A lot of doors will open with the new single fleet run venture. Costs will drop like a rock. VARA had so so many layers of cost.

Its fairly obvious the future of Virgin is just 70 737s. That’s it. Anything else that is not associated be with these 70 machines is dust.

True, but who owns VARA at the moment? Certainly not Bain according to the Administraters. When Ansett collapsed it dragged down all the highly profitable subsidies like Kendall and Hazo's.

Virgin have full ownership just like Tiger.

The contracts are tied to Virgin so it’s up to Virgin if they want to throw these away. It’s guaranteed income so would make no sense.

The extra cost of operating these routes with the 737 vs a old F100 is well offset by removing everything single thing that is tied to the Virgin Regional name. Down the last paperclip.

Get ready for a very lean 737 operation folks with sky high margins.

Hahahahah, Wheely you’re funny 😂
You wouldn’t be a Perth based 737 FO by any chance?

Expect A320’s to vanish like the 330’s. Fokkers are anyone’s guess as to when they will depart, flyout what free life is left in them then use them as Christmas trees to keep the skeleton fleet afloat. Or sell them if they aren’t already ;)

Please enlighten us with figures disclosing VARA profits, they are not available with VARA reporting combined into VA domestic in the last ASX reports.
To announce its profitable is pure speculation given no data is available in the public domain.

If we knew which entity the resources contracts are in, we could have a reasonable idea on VARA future. PS gave TT and VAINZ no warning before the cull.

Given Alliance purchased 21 Fokkers for 15 million 5 years ago, VARA fleet’s value is a rounding error.

The administrators and Bain have it all wrong, cull the 737 and get VARA HQ / team Skywest to rescue the company:)

So you think it a simple matter of replacing a 100 seat Fokker with a 180 seat Boeing? Can the 737 even get in to some of the mine runways?

Kendell was losing a shed load, thanks to regional jets and contract pilots ....... Hazo’s yes.

Yes.
List the Runways a 737 can not operate from 700 or a 800 with 27K bump.

Nope just a realist.

There is a lot of talk around the traps about bits and pieces hanging on. A330s still doing this. A320s still doing this. Fokkers still doing that.

Its 70 NG’s and nothing more.

I asked the question because I wanted to know.

There was an article in the West Australian a few days ago stating Bain has taken on some of the F100 leases

How many Fokkers does VARA have?

14 F100s currently, but a few are scheduled to be leaving this year.

The seat count of the F100s is more suitable for WA ops with for both RPT flights and mine charters. Also would be saying goodbye to Christmas / Cocos Islands...thats one place A320s cannot be replaced with 738s.

Perhaps if they are planning on retaining the two -700s?, they could be PER based.

I’d imagine QF are already walking around the Virgin Fokkers with masking tape and red paint ready to go plus positioning tugs ready to ‘nab them before Alliance does.

In other words Bain would be bloody silly to offload them when they cost nothing and are the hardest working part of the fleet at the moment.

It would be a strategic folly to allow QF or Alliance to get them.

I could be wrong but I think you may find it is more of an issue of pavement concession at some of the strips, particularly in 45 degree weather in summer.....especially with turning nodes...