Virgin putting on extra flights LAX/BNE
 

looking at flying BNE/LAX/BNE & would only ever pay to fly Qantas, if flights were free & that leaves VA as only nonstop option.

Looking at coming home around January 13 & expected to see a flight at around 10pm, but VA flight that day leaves at midday & instead of arriving back at BNE 2 days later, it arrives the evening before.

So realise VA only has a small fleet of 777's, but it seems they are making the most of them, now they are again flying nonstop from BNE, SYD & MEL to LAX.

Big question is why don't other airlines do the same ? Qantas, Air NZ, Fiji Air all seem to leave their aircraft at LAX all day. Surely, if you got a small long haul fleet like Fiji Air, you want to work it hard in busy periods like Xmas school holidays.

We've flown Fiji Air before & they were excellent (much better than Qantas), but this time around they are much more expensive than other airlines who fly direct or via New Zealand. Spoke to travel agent who said the reason for this is that Fiji is booming. Try & get a flight to Fiji in Xmas school holidays & you'll pay vastly more than flights to LAX via Fiji after school holidays. Eg. can do BNE/NAN/LAX/NAN/BNE after school holidays in January for $799 return, which is a bit like costs to fly to Queenstown in August(more than to LAX)

VA schedules are like the weather in Melbourne. If you don't like it today, it will be different tomorrow. ;)

I'm not sure why VA has the occasional additional mid day departure from LAX, VA6. It only operates one or two times a week (usually Wednesdays and always Saturdays as far as I can tell). It is accompanied by a late night departure from BNE VA9 to supply the next day's more typical late night LAX departure VA8.

I think the only reason they can do this is because they don't fly every day. On the days they have no flights scheduled, the next day they get going earlier. I can't be bothered to check, maybe the aircraft go on the MEL or SYD rotation on their 'off day', but if not they sit longer than the QF planes overall. In your case, there is no LAX-BNE on Jan 12th so the aircraft may even be sitting at LAX overnight, unless it is arriving from elsewhere.

If you don't want aircraft sitting at LAX, basically you need to double your flights and your aircraft, or have an off-day like VA do. Because the flight round trip is over 24 hours.

Since flights are only profitable if there is demand, I would guess that doubling up on capacity from LAX-Australia isn't viable at the moment, especially if it involves a lot more aircraft in the fleet. So the LAX crowd get to see lots of cool Australian aircraft on their lunch break.

Enjoy VA, I quite enjoy their product, especially long-haul.

what was getting at is VA seem to be making most of their small fleet, whereas other airlines don't.

Fares in late December early January are the highest of the year, due to Xmas holidays in USA & school holidays in Australia which run from late Nov to early Feb.

I thought conventional wisdom was that more than 2 aircraft required to operate route like BNE/LAX/BNE daily.

VA are doing BNE, SYD & MEL/LAX (BNE & MEL not daily) with only 5 aircraft in total. A midday flight out of LAX to BNE doesn't suit everyone, eg. don't think you can connect from anywhere on the east coast, but it's fine to connect, as long as not trying to get from anywhere east of say Denver.

VA don't seem to be giving away seats on their Sat midday flight LAX/BNE compared with other days when they depart at 2200, so they must be reasonably popular.

Yes, I get what you were saying. Just not sure I agree. They only manage these alternative schedules by skipping days of the week. I don't think that really makes them leaps and bounds better than their competitors. It is interesting and creative of them, I give them that.

look at OZ/USA fares for December/January all the time & they seem to be much more expensive than last December/January. Virgin & Fiji Air have put on extra flights over this period & still their fares are high.

Are the likes of Qantas missing out ? Are they simply wanting to maintain higher fares, as there's is a high cost operation ?

They basically rotate the 5 777s (now that they only fly AU-US) to provide a daily SYD, 5 times BNE and 5 times MEL. You'll find the midday BNE is usually the inbound MEL flight.