Virgin Australia boss John Borghetti is confident the airline’s new daily Sydney-Hong Kong route will stand up to strong competition from oneworld carriers on the route.
Virgin intends to start the daily A330-200 service mid-year while reducing its Melbourne service to five times a week due to slot constraints in Hong Kong.
The Australian carrier will enter a route dominated by oneworld carriers Qantas and Cathay Pacific but Borghetti said the airline’s award-winning service and business class product would allow it to win customers.
Read: Virgin Australia wins major industry awards.
He said he was happy with Melbourne-Hong Kong, which was performing well with high load factors.
“So in terms of Sydney, I am absolutely very confident, very confident indeed, and that confidence comes from a couple of areas,” he said.
“The first is the incredible acceptance that we’ve had in the Melbourne and the China market on the Melbourne-Hong Kong flight.
“It’s been very, very strongly supported and that gives me confidence that the Sydney service will also be very strongly supported.
“I think the big selling point… for us is very simple: it’s our service and our product. There’s no question in my mind that we have got the best product on Australia-Hong Kong.”
Another area giving the Virgin Australia boss confidence was Virgin Australia’s alliance with Hong Kong Airlines and Hong Kong Express.
He said the Hong carriers had been “phenomenal partners” with good passenger volumes coming through on their services from China.
“And I think that’s a relationship that will help the Sydney -Hong Kong service immeasurably,” he said.
Asked about expansion to mainland China, Borghetti said Virgin Australia's access to Greater China wasn’t due to a lack of desire but the “art of what’s possible” in terms of access to landing slots.
“We’re talking about airports that are very congested – Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and some others,’’ he said. “(They) are very difficult to get slots into and, of course, we try – dealing with the slot committees etcetera – and as we get them, we will start operating.”
However, Borghetti was reluctant to talk about a new trans-continental business class product the airline had previously said it planned to install on Boeing 737s to offset the loss of A330s with lie-flat seats heading overseas.
He also would not disclose whether the new Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft due to arrive towards the end of calendar 2019 would be fitted with a new business product.
“What I will say is we will never have an uncompetitive product on a very important route like the East Coast-West Coast,” he said. “Of that, you can be sure”
On the question of taking bigger 737s or the New Mid-market Airplane in which Qantas has expressed an interest, Borghetti said Virgin was constantly talking to Boeing about the best narrowbody aircraft.
Have questions or want to share your thoughts?
