Virgin Australia (VA, Brisbane International) and Virgin Atlantic (VS, London Heathrow) applied to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) for authorisation to engage in cooperation on flights between Australia and the United Kingdom and Ireland via Hong Kong International and Los Angeles International.
"The Applicants propose to cooperate in relation to inventory management, sales and marketing, scheduling, network and capacity decisions, pricing, product, operations and procurement in relation to services between Australia and the UK/Ireland via mutual mid-points in Hong Kong and Los Angeles, and any future mutual connection points," the two carriers said.
The two airlines further said that since neither of them serves the other's home market directly, the cooperation will not affect the status of competition on the market.
"Virgin Australia and Virgin Atlantic operate entirely complementary networks. They do not operate on any overlapping routes and, for both operational and commercial reasons, will not operate services in competition with each other in the future," the airlines said.
According to the ch-aviation schedules module, Virgin Atlantic currently offers daily services to Hong Kong from London Heathrow using B787-9 equipment, while Virgin Australia operates daily to the city from both Sydney Kingsford Smith and Melbourne Tullamarine using A330-200 aircraft.
The Australian carrier operates to Los Angeles daily from SYD, 6x weekly from Brisbane International and 5x weekly from Melbourne Tullamarine, all using B777-300(ER) equipment. Virgin Atlantic serves the Californian city 2x daily from London Heathrow using B787-9s and 3x weekly from Manchester International using A330-200s.
Virgin Atlantic is 51%-owned by Virgin Group. The holding only controls an 8% stake in Virgin Australia.
The ACCC plans to make its final decision on the proposed cooperation in November 2019.
