Virgin Australia defers Boeing 737 MAX deliveries to 2019

[MarkR]

Originally Posted by Jarden S

I wonder if the Cocos and Christmas Islands routes will remain? The fleet will be spread out to thin eventually to cover all existing flying.

The Cocos and Christmas Island routes are government funded, unlikely to see them go.

[Rowan McKeever]

The Indian Ocean Territories air services contract was only signed in 2016, so I guess VA is stuck with that one for a while. It only eats up two days of 1xA320, though, so I don't suppose it hurts fleet availability too much?

Interesting (off-topic) aside, on the subject of Christmas and Cocos (Keeling) Islands, to note that Garuda operates a weekly open charter out of Jakarta to Christmas Island every Saturday using their ExploreJet CRJ1000s.

[Yusef D]

In days gone by there was significant traffic to Christmas Is from Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur to gamble. Now Singapore takes that.

[Rowan McKeever]

Interesting, I didn't know that! I wonder, then, whether the GA flight and the rumours of one of the Lion Air group airlines starting a KUL-XCH flight are an attempt to take that traffic back?

[MarkR]

No point, Casino has been closed for 19 years and as mentioned, Jakarta based gamblers now head to Singapore. I suspect the traffic left is based on relocating boat people from the detention centre and some VFR traffic from immigrants who stayed when it all went pear shaped after the 90s Asian financial crisis.

[Rowan McKeever]

Ahhh I get ya... I read it as XCH residents heading to Asia for casinos... alllllllllllll makes sense now! Cheers