Pictured: The tail of a Virgin America jet is seen in San Francisco, Nov. 6, 2014.
Virgin Australia is teaming up with Qatar Airways to offer international flights to over 100 destinations from Thursday. This partnership is expected to intensify rivalry in the international travel scene, with customers saving big on airfares while traveling to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
The goal of Virgin Australia and Qatar Airways’ recent alliance is to provide flights during the busiest and most sought-after period for European travel. Furthermore, the aircraft companies seek to introduce a fleet of cheaper long-haul flights from Australia to Europe, News.com.au reported.
“The partnership between Qatar and Virgin Australia is going to bring much-needed competition, especially flying to Europe,” Virgin Australia chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka told the publication. “Competition is great for everyone. The more opportunities and choices consumers have the harder everyone has to work.”
“It has taken a while post-Covid for everything to return to a balanced field for a lot of reasons. This is our opportunity to help improve the competitive dynamic,” she said, indicating that the revised price chart was aimed at compensating for the high airfares people have been paying since COVID times.
Virgin Australia withdrew operations for four and a half years after going through a significant restructuring drive and entered voluntary administration in 2020. The airline was now accepting bookings for its new services, which will offer direct flights from Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth to Doha starting June 2025. Melbourne will be added to the route later in 2025.
“It is a tricky thing to get back into long-haul international flying, you need to have scale in order to be able to compete. To compete over time you have to be able to generate enough profit, so the partnership with Qatar gives us the ability to do this much quicker than we otherwise could,” Hrdlicka said.
She said the partnership with Qatar Airways was a game-changer, “driving benefits to consumers, the economy and Australian aviation.”
