VA looking at Widebodies

[Greg Hyde]

CONSIDERS WIDEBODY ORDER

Virgin Australia, however, is considering a fresh order for Airbus or Boeing widebody planes to replace its fleet of 6 A330s and 5 777s with a single model to give it better economies of scale and fuel efficiency, the CEO told Reuters.

“We are doing an exploration at the moment,” Scurrah said. “If the deal is worth doing we absolutely want to do one this year, but it is too early to speculate.”

The carrier would want delivery “a lot earlier” than the 2024 date when its widebody leases start to roll off, he said.

Virgin Australia this month announced it would stop flying from Sydney to Hong Kong over concerns about civil unrest and the virus, having earlier cut its Melbourne-Hong Kong route to enable it to launch new flights from Brisbane to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport in late March.

Full story

https://www.reuters.com/article/virg...-idUSL4N2AP1J3

[Erik H. Bakke]

If they want to take deliveries of the new widebody fleet "a lot earlier" than when their existing one comes off lease, that would point to an overall increase in widebody fleet size.