Virgin Blue group add services to Phuket
BANGKOK, 20 August 2010 –Thailand remains high on the list of priorities for Australia’s Virgin Blue group, according to international inbound sales manager, Gordon Young.
The group has recently announced it will expand services to Phuket using two of its brands Pacific Blue and V Australia.
Pacific Blue added a third frequency yesterday, 19 August, to the two weekly services it operates to the Thai holiday island out of Perth in Western Australia.
V-Australia, the international Australian airline formed by Virgin in 2008, will add a service from Melbourne to Phuket this December, giving it four flights a week to the island.
The airline currently serves Phuket with two flights out of Brisbane and one out of Melbourne using Boeing 777-300s.
During a recent interview, while visiting the airline’s general sales agency in Bangkok, Mr Young stressed the group’s commitment to Thailand year-round believing demand for holidays to Phuket would boom in the Australian market.
“This is not a seasonal operation; our services are there year-round and make a valuable contribution to the island’s inbound tourism from Australia,” he said.
“Flights are getting very high loads of around 90%,” he noted. “It remains a main point to serve for our network.”
Both Fiji and Phuket will gain more Pacific Blue services now that the airline has pulled its domestic network in New Zealand, a move that frees up aircraft and resources to concentrate on trans-Tasman services as well as points in the Pacific and Southeast Asia.
Expansion to Phuket for both V Australia and Pacific Blue is based on positive forward bookings and high loads according to Mr Young.
“Phuket traffic was always fine and even with travel advisories on Thailand our flights performed well.
“Bali had the same problem with travel warnings for years, but the bookings were always good on our flights. Australians are resilient travellers. They recognise their government adopts a conservative position.”
Pacific Blue uses a 180-seat 737-800 on the Perth to Phuket route, but as a fleet replacement programme kicks in it will replace current aircraft with Boeing 737-900s with 210 seats. They will be used to serve Phuket, Bali and Fiji.
V Australia, home- based in Brisbane, uses Boeing 777-300s to serve Phuket from both Brisbane and Melbourne.
Mr Young says V Australia can claim to have the “best service quality aircraft of any that lands in Phuket.”
Formed in 2008, the airline has six of the extended range Boeing 777-300s. The aircraft has a capacity of 361 seats across three classes – economy (288), premium economy (40) and business (33).
Virgin Blue, the parent airline which concentrates on domestic services in Australia, has 105 aircraft on order from Boeing with 60% of them to replace older aircraft and 40% to increase the fleet across the group’s airline brands.
V Australia was established by Virgin Blue in March 2007 when it confirmed an order for six Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. The new airline launched direct services between Sydney and Los Angeles in late 2008 and from Brisbane to Los Angeles in March 2009. The service to Phuket was established in late November, 2009.
