Virgin resumes Los Angeles-Melbourne flights.

Virgin Australia has restarted flights from the US to Australia’s second biggest city, Melbourne, with a five times weekly service that offers reciprocal frequent flyer and other benefits to passengers of alliance partner Delta Air Lines. The airline canned services to Melbourne in 2014 to concentrate on flights to Brisbane and Sydney but a restructure saw it stop flying between Sydney and Abu Dhabi in February so it could concentrate its Boeing 777 fleet on US routes. Virgin also dropped plans to fly from Perth to Abu Dhabi and last month announced it would start services between Melbourne and Hong Kong from July 5 using A330 aircraft as part of a strategy to capitalise on rising traffic from China. One of Virgin’s flagship Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, operating as flight VA23, took off from Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport at 11.30am local time Tuesday amid a fanfare that included an American-themed marching band, cupcakes and LAX Duty Free vouchers for passengers on the flight. The 777s feature Virgin’s award-winning business class with an on-board bar, premium economy and roomier nine-across seating in economy. “Los Angeles and North America is an important market for us and through our partnership with Delta Air Lines, we offer passengers 25 return flights per week across the Pacific and remain the only trans-Pacific alliance to offer business class guests lie flat beds with direct aisle access on all services,’’ group executive Virgin Australia airlines John Thomas said in a statement. Virgin Australia’s new flights leave Los Angeles at 10:05pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and arrive in Melbourne at 5:45am. Return flights leave Melbourne at 11:30am on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays to arrive in Los Angeles at 9am.