Virgin Australia will introduce a new Perth to Hobart and Adelaide to Hobart services with one-way promotional launch fares starting at just $149 and $49 respectively.

The Hobart – Adelaide service takes off October 22, 2021, and the Hobart-Perth service between October 29, 2021, and April 25, 2022.

The promotional seat sale starts at 7 am (AET) Tuesday, September 21, and will end midnight Sunday, September 26, 2021, or until sold out.

The special fares can be booked at virginaustralia.com and include double Status Credits as part of the Velocity Frequent Flyer Status Rewards Program announced last week.

Virgin Australia group chief strategy and transformation officer, Alistair Hartley said the announcement will reconnect more Australians in time for Christmas.

“Virgin Australia continues to look for new ways to expand our network schedule to create more travel opportunities for Australians where free movement across borders is permitted. That’s why we’re proud to announce the launch of services between Hobart and Perth in time for Christmas,” said Mr. Hartley.

“Over the past month, Virgin Australia has already announced two new Tasmanian services, so together that’s up to 18,000 more travelers who are able to explore the Apple Isle’s incredible tourist attractions and natural wonders, including Hobart’s MONA and the Salamanca markets and Launceston’s lavender estates and the seaside links of Australia’s premier golf destination, Barnbougle.

“Virgin Australia is now the only carrier to connect both Launceston and Hobart to five state capital cities including, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

Mr. Hartley added that for added confidence when booking, the airline is also waiving applicable change fees and allowing unlimited changes for bookings for travel between now and February 28, 2022.

“Our customers can book with confidence knowing they can change their booking if they need to,” Mr Hartley said.

The promotional fares are subject to terms and conditions and restricted travel periods.

Emirates is increasing flight frequencies to a number of US destinations from next month.

Emirates has been building up connectivity in response to growing passenger demand on the back of rising travel confidence and the easing of international travel protocols.

The airline says there is also growing interest from US travellers to visit Dubai, which will be hosting a number of major events including the World Expo this winter.

Starting from October, Emirates will be operating 78 weekly flights to 12 destinations in the US with an increase in weekly flights scheduled for Boston (BOS), Dallas (DFW), New York (JFK), San Francisco (SFO), Seattle (SEA) and Washington DC (IAD) as follows:

• Boston: five weekly flights, increasing from four flights a week
• Dallas: five weekly flights, increasing from four flights a week
• New York: 19 weekly flights, increasing from 18 flights a week (including flights connecting Milan and New York)
• San Francisco: five weekly flights, increasing from four flights a week
• Seattle: five weekly flights, increasing from four flights a week
• Washington DC: five weekly flights, increasing from four flights a week

Emirates has already restored pre-COVID-19 daily flight frequencies to Chicago, Los Angeles and on the routes connecting Athens-Newark and Milan-New York.

Emirates’ flagship A380 with its Onboard Lounge and Shower Spa will be flying to the US 24 times a week (12 flights to JFK, 7 flights to LAX and 5 flights to IAD) from October.

Emirates is also planning to further supplement its capacity for the winter season and by early December, it will have restored more than 90 per cent of its pre-COVID flight frequencies to the US with daily flights added to Boston, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC in addition to double daily flights to New York.

In addition to Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC, the Airbus A380 will return daily to San Francisco from December 2021.

Boeing 747 pilot Christiaan van Heijst has taken a stunning image of the northern lights and moonrise from his cockpit.

Christiaan takes up the story.

“The long way home.

“A lone settlement in the cold Northwest Territories of Canada passes by below, an elegant ribbon of northern lights to the north and a bright moon-rise over the horizon, to top it off. Magical.

“At times I can still barely believe I’m making a living while sitting in this office with a view. Even after eighteen years of flying professionally, I’m taken away by the natural spectacles that are unfolding outside my windows all the time.

“Magnificent views over stunning landscapes of clouds, breathtaking shows of dancing aurora borealis, silver moonlit nights and the sheer joy of flying the most iconic aeroplane ever built. And always with my camera in reach.

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“Some people tell me I’m lucky, but I respectfully disagree. Privileged to be in this position, for sure, but not lucky. Nobody was born with a 747 -rating in their license and I certainly did not get it for free either.

“And that’s exactly how it should be. Hard work, determination, setting lofty goals, and going even beyond.

“There are footsteps on the moon; don’t let anyone tell you something can’t be done.”

Christiaan is one of the world’s leading aviation photographers and more of his work and more close encounter (s) can be found here.

The possibility of a new search for MH370 has been dramatically enhanced by the latest results from trials of a new breakthrough tracking technology called WSPRnet.

READ: WSPRnet explained

Using a set of tools (see below) aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey says he is “able to detect and track aircraft anywhere in the globe and at any time currently or historically going back as far as 2009.”

This system has been undergoing a number of tests that have been set up by an ex Qantas Captain Mike Glynn and adjudicated by AirlineRatings.com which have been very successful.

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There is no doubt that Mr Godfrey’s work offers real hope of a significant breakthrough in the search for MH370 with a far more accurate picture of the flight route and last minutes of the flight which was lost on March 8, 2014, with 239 souls aboard.

“While Inmarsat satellite tracking and drift modelling have identified an area about 1900km west of Perth, Western Australia the search area is still large and more accurate data is needed to commit to a search,” Mr Godfrey said

“In my view, my work will not provide a “massive” amount of new data, but it will provide a significant breakthrough in the search for MH370.

“This breakthrough will be for the whole flight route beyond radar range into the Indian Ocean not just the last minutes of flight.”

A report of this most recent test can be found here.

Currently, Mr. Godfrey is tracking a search and rescue flight organized by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) and conducted by the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) in the vicinity of the 7th Arc in the southern Indian Ocean during March 2014.

“AMSA has kindly released to me under a confidentiality agreement all the operational planning data from their search and rescue flights. I am grateful to Duncan Bosworth ATSB for helping with the provision of the AMSA data.

“The RNZAF has kindly released all the flight data for a flight on 28th March 2014 from Pearce Air Force Base near Perth to the search area near the 7th Arc between 32°S and 33°S. I am grateful for the help of Brian Anderson who obtained the RNZAF flight data under a Freedom Of Information request,” Mr. Godfrey said.

Once these tests have been successfully completed, Mr. Godfrey will use this system to track MH370 from departure via the point of diversion to beyond the limited range of the civilian and military radar systems and into the Indian Ocean.

This data he says coupled with the Inmarsat satellite data will give a more accurate picture of the flight path followed by MH370.

Mr. Godfrey said that the information will be passed on to US-based Ocean Infinity, which has publically indicated that MH370 is unfinished business. Ocean Infinity searched for MH370 in January 2018.

However, any new search would likely not be till late 2022 early 2023.

Mr. Godfrey explains the set of tools thus:

“The WSPRnet Propagation Technical Analysis is based on the 2007 International Reference Ionosphere (IRI). The IRI is a permanent joint scientific project of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) started in 1968. It is the international standard empirical model for the terrestrial ionosphere since 1999.

“I use Proplab Pro V3.1 for tracing radio waves around the globe. Proplab Pro was one of the first ionospheric physics-based HF radio signal ray-tracing engines in the world for the PC and has been maintained and developed for over 30 years. It continues to be used by research organisations, scientists, engineers, students, the military and amateur radio operators around the world. It is one of the only software packages to reliably predict ionospherically refracted HF radio signal behaviour. It uses both three-dimensional models of the ionosphere as well as three-dimensional topographical data of the Earth to provide unprecedented detail in modelling HF radio signal propagation worldwide.

GDTAAA is a software application that I have developed that uses a Vincenty WGS84 navigation engine to track aircraft, a spherical navigation engine to track WSPRnet data links and anomalies. In addition, I use the Proplab Pro V3.1 engine with its embedded IRI 2007 ionospheric model to perform global ionospheric mapping and ray tracing.”

Singapore, like Australia, has been one of the strictest nations with pandemic restrictions with the six million people of the lion city largely unable to leave their island nation since March 2020 at all.

This has taken a heavy toll on their way of living and their normally thriving global aviation and trading hub – after serving 68 million passengers in 2019 and only 12 million last year.

“We will just have a little over two million passengers in all of 2021 as we just see three percent of normal flights,” Lim Ching Kiat, MD Air Hub Development at Changi Airport, told Airlineratings in a rare personal meeting last week in Singapore.

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The occasion was very special for Singapore: The city-state opened up on September 8 for just one country worldwide for the time being to come to visit again – Germany.

The author being German jumped at the opportunity to join the inaugural flight of the new Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) on Singapore Airlines (SIA) from Frankfurt to Singapore.

“It is is a major milestone for us to establish this new link with Germany,” said Keith Tan, CEO of the Singapore Tourism Board. “Germany is a trusted and safe country. We are very happy how the German government has responded to Covid” – unlike, of course, what many Germans think. For Singapore, it’s clear that this should only be the beginning.

“Probably by the end of the year we will see a few more countries we can link via a VTL,” announced Keith Tan. Asked if Australia could be among them, Tan replied: “The Australian High Commission here has been in talks to establish such a corridor, but with many new cases now in Australia we have to be careful.”

Very high on the wish list for Singapore is China, “we regard Chinese to be as safe as our own locals,” asserted Tan. Problem is, currently Chinese have to quarantine for 21-28 days on returning home. Singaporeans themselves when traveling in rare cases are facing an equally lengthy quarantine afterward in their homeland.

So what is it like to travel on a VTL flight? These are designated flights just for passengers traveling under the new scheme entering Singapore, while other SIA flights from Frankfurt and Munich can just be used to transfer in Changi to onward flights.

In short: It’s a lot of bureaucracy you have to go through and steep extra cost to pay for at least three if not four (depending on the length of stay) PCR tests. Also, you have to be sufficiently digital-savvy to handle the required local Tracing Together app which is paramount to download and actively use already before you can even board your flight to Singapore. This definitely doesn’t make sense for leisure travelers, especially elderly people, while it might be very much welcomed by business travelers to be able to restart their face-to-face contact with customers and colleagues overseas.

But there are several elements creating hassles and contradictions, so even usually savvy professional travelers will be brought to the limits of their wisdom at some point in the process.

This is something also Keith Tan acknowledges: “We know that right now, processes are complicated and we have to simplify them.” And he told the German media group: “You are our guinea pigs.” Some of the rules in Singapore for the German visitors simply don’t make sense and can’t be policed – like the requirement to stay in Germany for 21 days before the departure to Asia.

With European internal borders open again for free movement, there is no way to prove anyone might have violated this rule. It helps to always be aware of the fact that this is an all-new scheme for Singapore as well. There are local voices who are not happy that Germans are allowed to enter while locals basically can’t travel, as Singapore’s own attempts of creating travel bubbles most notably with Hong Kong have been repeatedly derailed.

With Covid cases rising in Singapore recently, this likely won’t happen in the short term. So local media were advised to stay away from Changi airport as the authorities didn’t want any headlines. Ironically, the local Straits Times newspaper contacted the author inflight via WhatsApp and asked for photos and a few quotes that were happily provided, resulting in a widely-read article published online as the aircraft from Frankfurt touched down in Changi.

Travelers need to be aware that they are under the microscope while in Singapore. Indoor and outdoor CCTV surveillance is the norm and even the slightest appearance of deviation from the rules can result in sanctions.

Expect late-night calls during the hours of hotel quarantine after arrival, until the negative PCR test result from the airport, is released, to check on you bunkering up in your room as is mandatory.

If anyone violates a rule, he or she is threatened with immediate expulsion at their own cost, and authorities leave no doubt they will execute this if they see fit. Adhering to all procedures and rules, which are a science of its own, results in relative freedom that no arriving foreigner has enjoyed in Singapore since the outbreak of the pandemic.

As long as have your Trace Together app ready to check in and check out absolutely anywhere you go and do the required PCR tests while in Singapore, which is impossible to forget as authorities are making sure with multiple messages.

Overall, traveling under the scheme gives business people a welcome opportunity to personally engage again in Singapore, resulting in a steep increase of Business Class fares recently on the VTL flights from Germany and a well-booked premium cabin even on the inaugural flight.

At the same time, holidaymakers won’t be much enticed to go through all the required hoops. For the airline and tourism industry, this scheme provides a glimmer of hope in any case. If requirements and procedures get fine-tuned and streamlined soon, by the time Australians might be able to make use of them to return to Singapore again, it might become a winning concept.

AirlineRatings.com Editor-in-Chief has been interviewed by Skynews on the tragic collapse of Ansett 20 years ago.

“Great airline, lousy business” — that was how Perth-born Sir Rod Eddington summed up Ansett Australia 12 months after he took the helm of it in the late 1990s.

His mission on behalf of 50 percent stakeholder News Limited was to get the airline into shape and sell it off.

It was a great airline with passionate, loyal, and committed staff but they, and Sir Rod, were flying through a perfect storm of muddled government policies, boardroom gambles, and management blunders that stretched back 20 years.

The unsecured creditors amounted to A$3 billion and they got nothing, but the staff was eventually paid most of their entitlements through administrators Korda Mentha.

The seeds of the demise of Ansett started decades earlier when the airline was laden with excess baggage by its then chairman, the late Sir Peter Abeles, who thought deregulation was a new brand of champagne.

Sir Peter’s company TNT was the other 50 percent stakeholder in Ansett.

As the chill winds of airline deregulation ravaged the US in the 1980s Sir Peter was saddling Ansett with 37 companies that were unrelated to aviation, such as one that made golf carts and another that built lecterns.

There is little doubt that Sir Peter’s passion to turn Ansett into the world’s best domestic airline sowed the seeds for the airline’s spiral.

Instead of a streamlined operation, he ordered many duplicate types such as A320s, while many aircraft such as the Fokker 50, BAe146, and A320 were purchased without business plans.

The order for the A320s was done without consultation with his then 50 percent partner Rupert Murdoch according to one News Corp. executive. Apparently, Mr. Murdoch stormed into a board meeting slamming a copy of The Australian on the table saying “look what bloody Abeles has done now.”

In shades of Howard Hughes’ bid to have gold anodizing on his fleet of Convair 880 jets for TWA, Airbus executives recount that Sir Peter wanted to have gold plated ashtrays in the First Class section of the A320s but was talked out of it by the manufacturer.

The problem for the airline was that this focus on luxury was sending the wrong messages to staff and creating a culture that was out of step with the new reality for domestic airlines — lean and mean.

Sir Peter had a free hand with Ansett with Mr. Murdoch more involved in developing his media and broadcasting businesses in the US and elsewhere.

Sir Peter was eventually forced out in 1994. His love of luxury may have succeeded if it were not for the Australian Government’s decision to first introduce deregulation in 1990, and then after the collapse of new airlines Compass 1 and 11, merge Government-owned Australian Airlines and Qantas and then float it.

Qantas, which had not been permitted to fly within Australia, gained a fully developed domestic airline system, while Ansett, which was given permission to fly international routes was forced to build its own international system from scratch, a handicap it never overcame.

The Government also created a single aviation market with New Zealand, which allowed Air New Zealand to fly domestic routes in Australia.

These policies were a cocktail for chaos.

In October 1994, the Government, under pressure from Qantas and Ansett, reneged on its earlier single market policy but gave Air New Zealand the right to buy into an Australian airline.

In September 1996 Air New Zealand acquired 50 percent of Ansett Holdings from TNT for $475 million, plus the pre-emptive rights to News Limited’s 50 percent interest.

With Sir Rod now on board and Air New Zealand, a 50 percent owner things moved rapidly.

Qantas exited its stake in Air New Zealand and the kiwi airline and Ansett entered an alliance with Singapore Airlines.

On the surface, everything looked rosy but Sir Rod’s candid but prophetic opinion of Ansett in early 1998 that it was “a great airline but lousy business” was a portent of things to come.

Things were not right with the Brierley Investments controlled Air New Zealand, with the owners’ financial problems derailing investment in new aircraft.

Sir Rod engineered an exit for News Corp with a deal to sell its stake to Singapore Airlines for A$500m, which delighted its chief executive Cheong Choong Kong who declared that Ansett International was the “jewel in the Ansett crown.”

But Brierley’s Air New Zealand, which held the pre-emptive rights to the News shares also saw Ansett as a jewel for a different reason. It wanted Singapore Airlines to buy into Ansett via Air New Zealand and sell down its own stake.

Air New Zealand eventually paid A$680m in 2000 for Ansett when the carrier was in need of significant new investment and when new entrants, Virgin Blue and Impulse, were set to challenge the domestic duopoly.

Sir Rod left for British Airways, Air New Zealand chief executive Jim McCrea was dumped along with 13 Ansett executives, and S&P downgraded its rating on Air New Zealand.

It was to downgrade it three more times in 2001.

While the management upheavals were rocking Ansett and Air New Zealand, Richard Branson’s Virgin Blue and Impulse Airlines started flights at half the price of Ansett, which had barely survived its encounter with the late Bryan Grey’s low-fare start up Compass Airlines in 1991.

Despite that narrow escape, the trade unions were not flexible on productivity trade-offs that might have made Ansett more competitive.

In November 2000, The West Australian broke the news that Ansett was losing money, which forced Air New Zealand to confirm that to the Australian stock exchange.

The next month Air New Zealand appointed former Qantas deputy chief executive Gary Toomey to run the combined Air New Zealand-Ansett group.

Then came a series of operational and maintenance breakdowns beginning over the Christmas holiday that led to the grounding of nine 767s, which severely damaged public confidence in the airline.

Just three months later the 767s were grounded again over yet another service bulletin oversight.

By June, Ansett was hemorrhaging A$18m a week, its yield had dropped 16 percent, and a loss of $400m for the year to June 30 was tipped, with a loss of A$700m for the following year.

Management’s entire recovery strategy for Ansett was based on buying out Virgin Blue and for it to take over 40 percent of Ansett’s routes.

Mr. Branson had indicated tacit agreement on the deal but changed his mind once the parlous state of Ansett’s finances was public.

Within hours of Mr Branson rejecting the Air New Zealand offer by publicly tearing up a fake cheque for A$250m, Ansett was up for sale to Qantas for just A$1.

Qantas rejected the offer on September 10 the day before the tragic 9/11 attacks in New York.

On September 12 Air New Zealand’s majority owner Brierley Investments abandoned Ansett and its 16,000 staff and placed the airline in administration.

Two days later Ansett was grounded. The shutdown was a disaster for Australia as a host of regional centers were cut off and tourism was devastated.

Limited services were re-started as the administrators looked for a white knight.

The New Zealand Government agreed on October 4 to inject $NZ885m (A$848m) and renationalize the carrier after a rescue package involving Singapore Airlines and Brierley fell over.

Mr. Toomey resigned a few days later.

The loss for Air New Zealand was $NZ1.425 billion, the largest in New Zealand history.

In November the Ansett administrators reached an agreement with the Solomon Lew-Lindsay Fox consortium, Tesna Holdings, to acquire Ansett’s mainline operation and other assets in a deal valued at $3.6b.

But by February that deal had soured due to a lack of support from the Government.

On March 4, 2002, Ansett flew its last service AN152 from Perth to Sydney, and it touched down on March 5 just after 6am — bringing an end to its 66 years of service.

Debate still rages about the responsibility for the demise of Ansett but possibly the simplest explanation was offered in 2004 by then Virgin Blue chief executive Brett Godfrey when he told media that his airline in that financial year would carry more passengers —10.6 million — than Ansett’s 10.1 million in its last full year on major truck routes with only one third the staff at half the pay rate Ansett staff enjoyed.

De-regulation had landed and Ansett with all its baggage simply wasn’t ready.