Virgin Blue acquires two Airbus A330s for long-haul flights within Australia
Virgin Blue Holdings Ltd continues beefing up its fleet of Airbus A330s as it announced on Wednesday the scheduled delivery of two more aircrafts by 2012, which the airline said would be deployed to serve its Australian service routes.
Specifically, the additional wide-body A330s would complement the airline's flight destinations from Australia's east coast to Perth with the initial announcement of another two Airbus planes of the same model set to start ferrying passengers on May next year.
Virgin Blue chief executive John Borghetti said that the new Airbus additions would commence servicing Australian routes by the first quarter of 2012, mostly serving on long-haul destinations between Western Australia and the eastern part of the country.
In a statement made available to the public on Wednesday, Mr Borghetti expressed optimism that the new aircraft acquisitions would attract more travellers from both the corporate and leisure segment of the commercial aviation industry.
He said that "the wide bodied A330 will appeal to both the leisure and corporate customer."
At present, Mr Borghetti revealed that Virgin Blue holds an estimated 10 percent share of the corporate traveller in the domestic market and he added that the carrier is gunning to increase that to at least another 10 percent by 2011.
Also, Virgin Blue is looking to further upgrade its presence in Western Australia's international airport, announcing that more infrastructure investments would be poured at Perth Airport, with the airline group planning to make the terminal as major hub within the next two years.
In preparation for that, Mr Borghetti said that Virgin Blue is planning to station some 85 cabin crews and 52 pilots in Perth by the third quarter of 2011.